The Digital Negative

MASTERS of SURF PHOTOGRAPHY

If there is one thing that both my wife, and I have an addiction to, it would be art books. Books about painters, photographers, sculptors, glass blowers, you name it, we like to collect it. Obviously my favorites are the big, glossy and expertly printed photo books. To add to our collection, I just got four of the best photo books I have ever laid my eyes on. Volumes 1-4 of the MASTERS of SURF PHOTOGRAPHY.

These photo books are oversized (11.25" x 13"), large format coffee-table monographs featuring the works of four of the most renowned surf photographers ever. They cover decades of surf history, starting in the 60's all the way to present time. Most all the photographs are picked by the photographer himself and are a collection of their favorite images, many have never been seen before.

My recommendation is that if you like surf photography, for whatever reason, go to The Surfers Journal website and order these books. My favorite is Volume 2, Art Brewer, followed by Volume 1, Jeff Devine.

strive surfboards

I'm still waiting for my water housing to be finished and it looks like it might still be another 3-4 weeks before it is finished. I decided to just let SPL keep my camera until the housing was finished. Otherwise they would have to ship it back to me for 1-2 weeks and then I would have to mail it back for the final build process. Time off without the camera is doing wonders for me going back through all my archives and choosing images I first passed up, or just never got around to printing.

Over the past several nights I have gone through my entire archive of surfing images and picked my favorite images of surfers on strive surfboards. Strive is a custom surfboard shaping shop located in Santa Cruz, and is owned and operated by a really great shaper named Spico.

Check out all the strive images at www.sportsshutter.com.

Spico himself, ripping in Santa Cruz

Going through photo archives

I've been trying to send a couple hours a night going through all my archives and pulling out shots that I passed on the first time I looked at them. I'm finding that my idea of a great shot slowly changes over time and I keep pulling out frames that I love so much more than the ones I first picked.

Here is one example, these are some frames I pulled last night from a recent surf competition. I was actually on the verge of deleting the shots I didn't originally pick. I'm sure glad I didn't do that.

The moral of the story. Don't always throw out the shots you don't first pick as your favorites. Your tastes just might change.

Fear and Loathing without my Camera

Only three days have gone by since I shipped my camera off to start the design process of the water housing and already I feel like I've lost a part of me. Having the freedom to just grab my camera and shoot whatever, whenever, is no longer possible. I have horrible nightmares of my poor little D2H sitting on some shelf of a dark warehouse, thinking I abandoned it and wondering if it will ever see the ocean again.

OK, it's really not that bad. Having two weeks without my camera is going to give me some time to process and print some of my images that have been on the backburner (although Sharon says it's a good time to take care of my honey-do list). I've been meaning to find some time to start choosing my favorite sports images from the past few years and built a killer portfolio that might help me land some new jobs. To help pass the time, I just received my upgrade to ImagePrint 6.0, the RIP software I use to do all my printing. If you do a lot of inkjet printing, this is the holy grail of printing software. While it is expensive, it awards you with the most incredible results that your inkjet printer is capable of. If you like printing B&W, there just is no equal.

My hat go off to Colorbyte Software who produced a killer upgrade in version 6.0. The software is more powerful and easier to use than ever. It even breathed life back into my old Epson 5500.

I'm off to do some printing.

Shooting a new break

Yesterday I had a wonderful surf shoot over at 4 mile in Santa Cruz. This was my first time shooting there and I must say it was amazing. This is such a great place to shoot because the beach is huge and I was able to shoot the surfers coming at me (instead of always seeing their butt), and get the opportunity to shoot into the tubes (however there weren't many of those). The icing on the cake is that in the morning the light is just perfect. The sun rises just over your left shoulder making for some great lighting on the surfers faces and great texture in the waves.

Like usual, you can find the complete gallery on my Pbase site.

Here are a few.

And Daniel.. Why are you flipping off the photographer?

The time to get wet is near

After much thought and days of research, I finally took the plunge and ordered a water housing for my D2H. While shooting surfers and kitesurfers from land with a telephoto lens is great, it just doesn't equal the type of pictures you can get when you are up close and personal. Some of my favorite shots are those that I take using the fisheye lens with the athlete only a foot away. In order to do this in the water I need a water housing, a strong helmet, an nerves of steel and lots of practice.

I originally was looking at getting a Mike Waggoner custom surf housing and then I drifted over to Aquatech who makes beautiful custom housings with a price to match (they are the Ferrari of housings). I worked with Aquatech for a couple of weeks finalizing the design and then waiting for a quote. I nearly fell out of my chair when I got a quote of nearly $7000. Can't do that! Next I contacted the guys at SPL Waterhousings and let them know what I wanted and what I needed in a water housing. After several emails they confirmed they could do it and sent me a quote that was under $3000. This was within my budget so I pulled the trigger and ordered one. Now you have to remember these are custom, made to order housings so it will take 5-8 weeks before I ever get to lay my eyes on the finished product. The difficult part of the process is that I have to send them my camera for 2 weeks at the beginning of the project and another week at the end. Don't know what I'm going to do without my camera for that long.

So here is an example of an SPL Waterhousing built for the new Canon Mark II camera. These images are copyright SPL Waterhousings.