This image, titled “Lesser Spotted,” captures a close-up.

Corey Arnold’s photos of waves crashing over a crab boat are so real that fishermen get seasick when they view them at the Imogen Gallery in Astoria.

The gallery will display 17 of Arnold’s prints showing life on fishing boats in Europe, the Bering Sea and Bristol Bay through March 4 in conjunction with the annual FisherPoets Gathering.

Imogen director Teri Sund called Arnold’s work “completely profound.”

“There are a lot of people who look at his photographic prints and ask if they are paintings,” she said. “They read them as paintings. But there’s also this great sense of realism in what it looks like out there. He takes you along for the ride; he puts you out there in the elements and you can’t help but feel it.”

Arnold, who joined a commercial fishing boat in Bristol Bay in 1995 while studying photography, explores life on a fishing boat, from the mundane repairing of a crab pot to the landing of a bald eagle on board with a fish in its talons.

He captures a fisherman hugging a bloody salmon, another in a contemplative moment looking out over the Bering Sea, two working on deck during a storm, a crewmember gleefully grasping a giant crab in each hand.

The exhibit is about nostalgia, loneliness and being far away from home, Arnold said.

“I think there’s something about being in this world away from your normal world and being with your fishing colleagues that binds you all together as fishermen. You’re all away from your loved ones and experiencing this life that can be at times lonely, but you all have this shared community that you experience with them.”

Fishing is a love/hate relationship, Arnold added, and he’s trying to translate that with his photos.

“We love the idea of what we’re doing, we love the camaraderie, we love the stories when we get back home, the adventure, the escaping everything. But it’s also quite miserable at times. There’s a lot of suffering, a lot of loneliness.

“I’m interested in taking people on a journey through experiencing the harder times to the sense of humor and the ridiculousness of fishing. Of how we cope with being out there, working 20 hours a day.

“I really like creating big prints for the viewer to meditate on and put themselves in my place when I’m out there or a fisherman’s place.”

To create those photos while balancing aboard a boat rocking on the waves, Arnold must be patient and nimble.

“I really like photographing waves and storms, and the minute you poke your camera out into the weather — and you have to get it low to make the waves feel as big as they are — the minute you poke your camera over the rail, you’re inundated with saltwater and spray. Your lens becomes blurred and it’s impossible. You have to walk off into some kind of shelter and use cleaning solution to get the smeary saltwater off. So it’s really tedious to do so much cleaning all the time when you’re shooting in stormy weather.

“You never tether yourself in because you always have to be able to run away from danger. You don’t want to get caught up in machinery or have a crab pot sliding into you. You just get your sea legs and figure it out over time.”

Noting that Arnold, who lives in White Salmon, Washington, won a Sony World Photography Award for his nature photography and has an international following, Sund said it was an honor to display his work. He has had shows at the Imogen during the FisherPoets Gathering every two years since 2014.

While not every fisherman is a poet, Arnold said, many are interested in the art of their job.

“They feel passionate about their identity as a fisherman, and I think that’s what unites people as fisher poets,” Arnold added. “I feel connected to them.”

‘Far From Home’

On view at Imogen Gallery, 240 11th St., Astoria

www.imogengallery.com