Chicks at the Wheel

Chesapeake Bay Program is Celebrating the women boat captains at the helm of the Bay

When the Covid-19 pandemic put a pause in Maryland photographer Kristin Rutkowski’s work, as it did for many others, she turned to nature-based activities to pass the time. Living in the heart of the Chesapeake region in Annapolis, Maryland., there was no shortage of opportunities to take her sailboat out on the water. While on the water, she got an idea for a personal project that would blend her love of photography with boating.

The result was Her Helm—a website and book featuring some of the most adventurous female boat captains on the Chesapeake Bay.

Some lookers there, but, alas, no bikinis.

When Rutkowski first began working on this project, she admits she fell into the stereotypical mindset that there would not be enough female captains to warrant a story. Much to her surprise, there was no scarcity of women to photograph and she would soon need to implement an application process for women who wanted to be featured as the project expanded. The project that originally started as a one-page tab on Rutkowski’s portrait website soon became its own site that would take almost three years to fully develop. Kristin Rutkowski began taking photos for Her Helm after being out on her sailboat and getting inspired by female boat captains.

The first person Rutkowski photographed was Janet Rupp, a fishing boat charter captain who she approached at her local marina. Rutkowski soon realized that she wanted to celebrate the variety of boats that the women were captaining, as well as where they were located, their age, race and boating background.

As a photographer, Rutkowski loves helping people see how a good portrait of themselves can be empowering. With Her Helm, she embraced the uniqueness of every woman’s ship vessel, the different lighting to work with, the subject’s comfort in front of the camera and so many other conditions. Rutkowski’s goal was to portray her subjects in their “spot of confidence” so they would have this “representation of themselves as a captain and looking incredible.”

The individual sessions themselves varied greatly for each woman featured in Her Helm. Rutkowski would travel 30-60 minutes each way to meet the captain at her boat and typically spend anywhere between 1-2 hours photographing them. Though, there were some women such as Iris Robertson who she only had five minutes to photograph before they were scheduled to set sail.

Prior to each session, Rutkowski would call each woman she was about to photograph and spend about an hour to get their backstories while also giving them a chance to get comfortable with her before putting them in front of a camera. Rutkowski notes that editing the paragraph summarizing their background took just as much time as editing the photos because she wanted the language to “capture the confidence of the women and have them feel uplifted by her words.”