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surfing

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500mm

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Couldn't resist with that title. Photo conditions today were a bit challenging. Even at low tide, the break was pretty far out. The inside waves were also tall and mushy enough to occlude a lot of the action and throw mist on the rest. I stopped over at Scripps after Black's but the wind had killed it. I cropped the bottom of most of these.





I replaced my old Canon scanner with a new LIDE400. The old one was photography grade but mid-tier; it had a backlit insert for negatives and slides. No longer, it looks like the unassuming LIDE400 is Canon's top model. Flatbed scanners aren't great for negatives and slides anyway.





2021 brought a pretty decent swell. I can start making notes on surf spots now:





It's 2021 now. Not too different from 2020 but people are more optimistic.





The first week of December almost always brings one of the biggest swells of the year. This one wasn't epic, but good enough to take a vacation Friday for some 0730 shooting and 0930 surfing. The lead image is a pretty good depiction of the difference between pre-sunrise shots and early-sunrise shots. The Black's cliffs make for a pretty tight window for good lighting.





Looking for a different angle, I wanted to take the 500 out to a jetty. My goto would be Mission Beach, but Derrick was sure Ponto would do the trick.





Seascape session.





You already know about the covid, now you know about the sharks. The (relatively mild) brushfires have given the sunlight a pleasant orange tone.
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So Jes and I strolled down to Black's at dusk. I was hoping to get some awesome shots of the apocalyptic sunset behind surf silhouettes, but the marine layer disappeared the sun before splashdown. Still, decent waves resulted in a good photo session with the 500, gallery below.





Idaho Falls was pretty mellow. We got a few rounds of Snow Eagle's Beaver Dick and executed on a project goal of obtaining the giant guiness cup from The Celt.
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The old sugar mill had been converted to a semi-touristy market. We stopped by for a chemex pour of some local brew. An adjacent building in the dirt lot bore the JC surfboard logo so we strolled over to see where the shaping magic happened. JC looked deserted, but next to it was Pyzel where they were doing some shaping. The guy came out to say hi.
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As I'd seen before, the neighborhood is pretty unique. It's a patchwork of residents and rental properties that attract the surfing elite when the north shore is going off. Lots of jet skis waiting for November.





The League of Sport took advantage of nice weather and Derrick's new cul de sac to play a full nine innings of wiffle. The visitors in red and green went up big early on the home team in red, then slowly collapsed defensively, only to hold out in the end.
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But the high surf and high waves reached the base of the cliffs and left the last bit very slick. Entry was not impossible, but we didn't think about exit.





The weekend brought nice waves and great weather, plus the water is not exactly numbing. Saturday afternoon had a strong offshore breeze, making for some serious spray off the lip. Sunday morning I went out at Encinitas with Derrick and Ryan.
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On my own advice I went with center/continuous focus (stupidly not doing continuous shutter). I can't say it produced significantly better results. There are fewer frames where the water in front of me is the focal plane:





I finally took the housing out on the water with the sun up.
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Naturally, shooting daytime is much easier than the night. I was able to paddle around with the big, heavy rig using bodysurfing fins (I wouldn't want dive fins). About midway through the session it got a bit more difficult to stay in position. Not sure what to do about it, although there was a pretty strong current.
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Here are some more shots where evaluative decided to focus on water rather than surfer:





The last night session left me in need of a Ikelite-Ikelite sync cord with which I could trigger an off-camera SB800 using the Ikelite flash. My cord eventually came in and everything hooked up as it should.
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I managed to wrangle another three subjects - Erik, Nathan, and Ryan. Unfortunately, without Jon I had no slave flash assistant. With no other options, the surfers switched off holding the flash. This, of course, mean fewer rides between them and a lack of continuity in equipment use.
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Being the nightsurf veteran, Erik picked up some glowsticks and bravely packing taped them to his board and butt. The new camera setup didn't make them any better for focus - the led necklaces are still king - but they had some nice effects when not blown out by flash on whitewater.





One morning whilst enjoying my oatmeal I decided to check on the going rate on an underwater housing for my d700. My slr has been around for awhile, and you'd think either:
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I'm enthusiastic about taking it on a dive but - more pressingly - it's July, the water is warm, and I haven't done nightsurfing in forever.
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Since I had Jon surfing rather than flashing, we didn't experiment with using dive lights to illuminate the subject and perhaps make focusing easier. Another technique I was going to try was focus-locking the flash operator and shooting from the hip.





Five days on Oahu, three days on Kauai. Ty was kind enough to put me up on his futon, fry me linguicas in the morning, and be an all-around pal; like old times. Ninety minutes after my arrival, the Volcom Pipeline Pro final heat was on, so we booked it to the north shore to catch some excellent wave riding.
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After eleven miles Kalalau Beach is a welcome sight (random internet source says the total elevation change is 5,000'). The beach had a nice shoulder-high shorebreak that was great for bodysurfing.






Cheryl booked us a coveted camp rv site in San Clemente.






R, Dan and Dave came down this past weekend. Besides the requisite Halo, Winner, surfing, and tasty food/drink, we were on a mission to clear the rocks out of the second terrace. It's difficult to describe the size of the task. But I should add that Dan cleared out the three juniper stumps that confounded the other two a year ago. Also the pier for the late satellite dish was hammerdrilled down to size.
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The surf session at Fletcher's was pretty exciting. Cleanout sets in September, E says he had an overhead. Warm water, too.





So the ol' 1.6 Athlon setup finally choked. Hard to say what it was, I've failed to diagnose the problem hardware having independently swapped everything out. I'll revisit when I'm setting the box up as a terminal in the garage.





I ran a script on my wave height log to plot mean and max set height (per Surfline) by month. The data goes back to mid-2006 and counts a few of the popular SD breaks (Blacks, Cardiff, etc.).






A few photos from Saturday's session at the MB jetty, thanks Connie. The weather is hot, the water is cold.





So we took the atc2k out for the second first time. Work must be done on how it's affixed, but otherwise it worked well. The Fletcher's break was pretty brutal, enough so that Erik's recent acquisition lost most of its skin on a wave.







Windy day, bright sun in the wrong spot. But if you have access to a nice lens, why not?
Next: Columbus Day off.






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He was right and we had about 45 minutes of great surf. I brought out the camera in time for the wind and rain to kick up.





The swell's a'comin'. Erik, Matt, and I went out to Fletcher's for some surf n' shoot. Then got pho with the White Lambda who stumbled into my large, empty house.











A farewell to departing colleagues. Happy hour at Cozymel's.
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Moonlight Beach. Connie and I traded off surfing and shooting. The waves weren't bad - a refreshing departure from slow Del Mar. There was a bit of a crowd, but nothing terrible.





Big surf in Del Mar - clean too.





Rosarito.