Shoot the waves

After a long day on Saturday of waiting to see if the surf would pick up at a local surf spot it eventually became surfable at about 4pm. The hardy souls who had waited all day with me went in for a surf I took a few photos, unfortunately, the light was dropping fast and it quickly became clear that the 'action' shots weren't working.

So what to do? No point in calling it a day and heading home, especially when I had hung around in the cold all day waiting to see if it was going to be on. I might as well get something for my trouble.

So the opportunity to get some wave shots was helped by the failing light, allowing me to drag my shutter and see what effects I could get.

As far as technique goes all of these were shot on a 300mm f2.8 on a monopod with a Nikon D2x, my shutter speed is a 15th of a second at f18 for all the shots apart from the first one below which was shot at 1/25 at f14. ISO was at 200.

As you can see you can get some good effects, each wave is obviously going to be different and keeping an eye out for these opportunities can provide some interesting results. Don't be afraid to take plenty of shots, for each one that works there will undoubtedly be many that fail but don't let that put you off.