My recent film, First Row to Alcatraz , is a more personal account of my own interaction with the sea. I first built a water tight wooden camera housing that could hold a 16mm movie camera with a battery pack and an apparatus that would release the shutter once a second. The box was then mounted on to two pontoons that I had built out of sheet metal. I then rowed out to Alcatraz Island in rough seas on a stormy day, towing the apparatus behind me. Through the porthole in the box, the camera captured my labor in stuttering, fleeting moments. Finally, with the second hail squall quickly approaching and the camera box acting more as a sea anchor in the rising ebbing current, I was forced to pull the apparatus into my boat with me, or risk being pulled out under the Golden Gate. It is from the back of the boat that the camera documents the second half of this brief, but arduous journey back to the harbor, and to safety.

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Pontoon Camera Housing Boat

Wood, Steel, Varnish, and Brass