Learning Surf Photography

Todays Lessons: Take a Test Shot, Thick Gloves Suck, Swim More

I learnt a few good lessons shooting yesterday, I’ll no doubt get around to writing up full posts on some of these subjects at some point, but here’s the top three lessons I will be taking away from the session.

I still managed to get a couple of shots that I liked, but I was hoping for a lot better, this one is probably my favourite:

Ben Freeston at Bantham, ISO 320, 50mm, f3.2, 1/1000

I like the angle from behind the wave and I’m pleased I kept my eye to the viewfinder and predicted when Ben would come up for another turn fairly well, the lump in the near foreground which is totally out of focus adds to the image I think, just the little crest peaking out in crisp focus where he’s turning works and the hills in the background let you know it’s Bantham if you’re familiar with surfing there.

I need to work on the processing I think, I had another version with much more vivid colours in the sky but it looked really unnatural, even though I preferred it, I’m going to try and find some Lightroom tutorials on avoiding the halo ridging effect you get with dark areas meeting lighter ones because it annoys me a lot and I’d like to give this kind of image a bit more of a boost in the colours without it looking so much like a horrible HDR image.

You can see more of the photo’s from the session in this flickr set: www.flickr.com/photos/bgarthp/sets/72157638588399576/