Boka Vanguard + Argos
One of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve encountered while taking photos involves photographing ships with their extreme cargo. Corpus Christi is a marine-centric city with an expansive port (third largest based on waterborne tonnage ye2021) and bustling industrial activity including Port Aransas, Aransas Pass, Ingleside, Portland, and Gregory. A colleague of mine (Hector Zertuche | Knightstorm Productions) was hired by Boskalis to capture video and photos of their heavy-lift ship, the Boka Vanguard, as it passed through the Corpus Christi Ship Channel at Port Aransas and made its way to the Kiewit Offshore shipyard in Ingleside with extremely oversized cargo. BP’s Argos production platform traveled around the world on the back of the Boka Vanguard to have some final work done before being deployed in the Gulf of Mexico.
The ship and its cargo were going to be captured by an unprecedented number of professional drone pilots from the Corpus Christi Ship Channel at Port Aransas, Ingleside-on-the-Bay, and finally at Kiewit Offshore’s dock. Unfortunately, with such an extreme cargo on this incredible vessel, my colleague wanted to go above and beyond (literally) what the rest of the teams were doing to ensure that his client would receive thorough and proper documentation of the end of this incredible journey for their ship. That’s where I stepped in. Since the four or five separate drone teams were limited on their flight range and altitude, we could get shots that no one else was getting, from the helicopter. Now, this wasn’t my first time doing aerial photography, in fact, this would be my fifth time in the air for industrial photography clients. I’ve worked to photograph several other heavy-lift cargo ships as they came to the Port of Corpus Christi.
After a full day and half of waiting for conditions to align, the call was made. Our ship was coming in, and after photographing the Vanguard from the jetty at Port Aransas, I rushed over to the airport and hopped on my flight to document some history being made.
