Hear the story of Surfer Magazines latest cover, shot by Morgan Maassen, of Nate Tyler in France, this video actually offers much more of an insight into Nate’s lifestyle than the cover itself but it’s well shot and does reveal that he hadn’t even seen the photo at the time it was shot.
I find that friends I’m shooting photo’s of are pretty keen to see the pictures straight away, I guess if you’re a pro it’s not a big deal but every day surfers that I encounter are always happy to see the photo you got of them and often want to see and share them as soon as you get back from the beach.
There’s a couple of tips for this that I will be highlighting in the next Workflow Basics post which might help out others in a similar situation.
Lessons Learnt For My Shooting:
I love France and have been there quite a few times for surf trips, my most recent was in March 2011 and I’m going again this year for a journey a little bit further North than the usual Hossegor area.
Here’s a shot from the last trip I took, shot at around the same time of day as the Surfer Cover, I was trying to show some context with the dunes in the foreground and create a parallel line for the lip of the wedgey Le Penon peak in the background.
I don’t think it worked that well, the fact that Monsieur is about to fall off doesn’t help, also the grass looks a bit busy and would look better if it was sharper maybe, but I think the big culprit is the boring 45 degree from above angle of the action, Morgan has definitely got a better looking subject but by getting low it makes the air look higher and gives the perfect pale backdrop for the silhouette of the surfer.
Looking back through my photo’s of the session I have a couple of guys doing airs off the back which could have looked great if I had been at sea level off to the left about 50 yards, next time I will make sure I try that angle out.
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