Image Of The Week: Where Credit Is Due

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Image of the Week / Racing: Image Of The Week: Where Credit Is Due

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If not for veteran offshore racing photographer Tim Sharkey, professional-grade aerial images from last weekend’s Offshore Powerboat Association Point Pleasant Beach Grand Prix in New Jersey wouldn’t exist. If not for a helicopter provided by Ascent Aero and made possible by Russ and R.J. Breuninger of the Bracket 300-class Brothers Racing/Race 4 Charities.org team, Sharkey would not have been in the air to capture them.

And that would have been a shame as the event likely will go down as the roughest event of the year and Sharkey came home with a bounty of big-air images.

The Brothers Racing/Race 4 Charities.org team was picture-perfect during the Point Pleasant Beach Grand Prix. Photos by Tim Sharkey copyright Sharkey Images.

“They supplied the chopper and they convinced me to commit to shooting the event,” said Sharkey of his benefactors.

Though the Brothers Racing/Race 4 Charities.org 32-footer was the only boat in its class, the Breuninger brothers still had plenty to contend with thanks to unruly Atlantic Ocean conditions off Point Pleasant Beach.

For Sharkey, who has worked from all sorts of helicopters during the years, shooting from a Guimbal Cabri G2—a two-seater—was a first.

“It’s a two-seater with three rotors and it is designed for pilot training,” said Sharkey. “It had the same amount of room, or a little more, as an R-44 up front and an enclosed tail rotor with three blades lades versus the Robinson’s two-blade and exposed tail rotor

“It was very smooth,” he added. “I have never flown in a two-seater and this was a good one to be my first.”

And, as it happened, the perfect day for it.