After last week rain storm, my friend Dan wanted to go surfing (bodyboarding to be exact) and we came up with the idea of me photography him surfing. Dan liked the idea a great deal since he had been surfing for over 10 years and he had never been photographed ‘properly’.
So on Friday morning, I went o Adorama and rented the Canon 300mm f2.8L IS lens for the weekend. The lens is pretty large and heavy due to the f2.8 apature but the picture quality is amazing! So it should be as it costs $4000 new!
Anyway, Dan and I drove down to Monmouth county in New Jersey bright and early yesterday and started looking for waves for him to surf. After a couple of beaches we stopped at one around 10 o’clock at Belmar and Dan suited up while I gather all the gears. The waves were that high and with the wind, beach, etc. the result was not so good surfing. I am no expert so I can’t tell you the details.
After an hour or so surfing, we took a break and had a long lunch. By then the weather had improved drastically with the clouds broken up and the sun shining bright. The wind had also dropped to around a few miles per hours so we went on a search for another beach further south after lunch around 2pm.
At first all we found was the same. Big waves that close up very quickly. Eventually around 3:30pm we decided to head back up north and looked at each beach as we past them. And if we didn’t find any good one then we will call it a day and go home.
But on the last beach at Point Pleasant we looked, it was packed with spectators on the beach which was a good sign. When we got to the beach itself, we could see there were at least 30 surfers out in the water catching big waves! So we immediately ran back to the car and got ready.
And you can see the results in these photos. Despite not having surfed for over an year, Dan managed to catch some big waves and I managed to track him and took a bunch of photos. I did managed to lost him amidst all the surfers for a couple of times since his all black wet suit looked so similar to all the others!
Before we went to the water, Dan reckoned he properly only had the strength to do one or two waves but I guess the excitment (and the Mountain Dew) got to him and we stayed there for over 2 hours. In the end, Dan lost one of his flipper when trying to get one more wave and the light was fading fast anyway so we left at around 6pm.
Technorati Tags: Bodyboarding, Surfing
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