Water Breaker

I partook in picture taking a heck of a lot today. Probably filled up a card and a half. In the morning, I went to this cool little inlet that I found the other day. The sun was just rising, and the colors were amazing. I haven't edited those yet though. Later in the day, we went back to Botany Bay and Botanical beach. I walked on the beach, getting a bunch of pictures of tide pools and a very docile heron. During the last part of the day, we went to Sombrero Beach (I think it's called?), and I thought I might be shooting the sunset. However, those plans changed.

Apparently, that beach is very, very popular for surfing. There were tons of guys out on the water, so I basically just sat there for two hours and made surfing pictures.

Figuring out settings was a constant battle. At first, the sun was at full bast as backlighting the surfers. I needed to stop the action, but still get a decent depth of field and get detail in the dark wet suits. I also needed to keep an aperture of at least f/8 to get rid of aberrations in the lens.  I shot at 1/500, f/8 and ISO400 for that lighting.

Then, set sun dipped below some clouds and epic light rays started. As that progressed, the lighting got more and more dramatic, but also darker and darker. The contrast between the light rays and the water/surfers got more and more. I decided that I need to preserve as much detail as possible in the light rays, since it's easier to get detail back in the shadows than highlights. At least for digital.

I shot at the same settings, since I was including the sky in the exposure more. The shadows and highlights both lost a bit of detail, but that's all I could do in the conditions. The surfers were moving too fast to use bracketing, maybe if I used a tripod and preset the framing it could work. In the future I might try that, but this method worked well enough.

For framing, I tried to get the sky in the exposure as much as possible. Next was obviously getting the surfers in there. This was kind of a hit and miss, since I did not know where they would go or the waves would take them. Basically, I tried to use looking space (put more room in the frame in the direction that the subject is facing or looking), but in the end it was just chance and bit of skill.

With the shot I got, the colors weren't really working for me. The sky was amazing, but water, no no. Didn't work for me. However, I loved it in b/w. For the rest of the editing, I lightened up the spot where the surfer was a bit. Then I raised the clarity a bit to get even more drama in, especially in the sky. That's about it though, mainly it was brightening up the water where the surfers were.

See you tomorrow!