Since converting my camera gear to digital in 2000, I've snapped untold thousands of surf pictures, using four different camera rigs. The total number of digital pix I've taken is over 30 thousand, with surfing as the single biggest category. I've sold thousands of dollars of pictures to individuals and organizations. I've placed photos in magazines, including major surf publications.

In spite of this experience, I'd categorize myself as an amateur; I don't make my primary living from surf photography. My ambition is merely to share the stoke, and pictures do a wonderful job of this. Still, I've studied and developed a method for this; that's the subject for this series of columns.

Do you want to take surf pictures? Do you want to improve your skills? If so, this series of columns may help. Do you have pointers and advice that might help others? If so, please email me with your inputs. Together we can all learn and improve.

Let's start by stating what might be obvious: Surf photography is difficult! Here are some challenges:

1. Camera equipment does NOT like sand, wind, nor salt water.
2. Surf photography is not still-life photography, rather, it's high-speed action photography.
3. Surfing typically requires long focus telephoto lenses.
4. Shooting at dawn or dusk (as I tend to do) presents challenging low light conditions.
5. Equipment that can meet the demands of surf photography is expensive.
6. You want to shoot from the water? Oh my gawd the challenges just escalated like you can't believe.

Hope this isn't too technical, but here goes:

Photography is all about light (photos is the Greek word for light). To successfully expose an image on film or on CCD, you have to move a lot of light through the lens. But telephoto lenses are narrow angle lenses, as in less field of view for the source light. To freeze action, you need a fast shutter speed (like 1000th of a second or less), as in less time to acquire the light. Dawn or dusk photography means less ambient light available.

A trade off for shutter speed is your camera's aperture or F stop. You can open the aperture to allow more light into the camera. But this isn't without a cost. A wider aperture means less depth of focus. Think of it this way. A pinhole aperture has infinite depth of focus. This means that an insect one inch from the camera is in focus, and at the same time those mountains 10 miles away are also in focus. With a wide aperture, you can focus on the mountains, but the insect is totally blurred. Or vice versa.

One compensation for lower light conditions is a higher ISO setting for your camera, or a higher ISO rating for your film. But the higher the ISO number, the more likely you are to acquire a noisy image. Noisy image equals bad picture. Some cameras are notorious for noise at higher ISO settings. No camera is immune from this effect.

You might think your camera's flash can add light to the scene. Forget about it! Most people don't realize it, but a typical camera built-in flash is good for about eight to twelve feet. Shooting from shore? Don't even try using a flash! Ever been to a stadium at night where people in the stands are snapping acton on the playing field using their flash? Well, it makes a cool effect to see all the lights twinkling, but each and every one of those budding photographers is wasting their time. There is no chance their flash will illuminate the action on the field.

The longer your telephoto lens, the more your pictures will be susceptible to vibration blur. Two strategies can help with this: vibration reduction and a tripod.

Finally, since surfing is all about high speed action, the turn-on time for your camera is critical, as is the multiple picture timing. If you see your buddy on a great wave, and it takes 1.5 seconds to turn on your camera, you loose. If you can't take multiple exposures at a rate one every 1/2 second or quicker, you will never get a good sequence of shots. A sequence of shots is a great way to get that one special moment during the total wave ride.

OK, that's enough for the challenges. In the next installment, we'll start talking about how to overcome these difficulties. Hope you are still game for it.

CU Out There,

DogMan