2015 East Coast Surfing Championships

The 2015 Coastal Edge ECSC completed on Sunday with the crowning of the pro champions.

A huge congratulations to Kanoa Igarashi for taking the VANS Pro championship. Kano jumped out to an early lead with a 7.67 point ride. After Noah Schweizer, who placed second, closed the gap with 7.23; Kanoa  threw down a 7.77 for a winning 2 wave total of 15.44. Noah made a late charge but came up short at 13.43, followed by Beyrisk De Vries and Oney Anwar.

 Kona Igarashi, USA, 2015 ECSC VANS Pro Champion

In the Vans Jr Pro championship, congratulations goes to Seth Moniz, who held off Griffin Colapinto, Gabriel Farias, and Stevie Pittman for the win. It is really cool to witness the future of competitive surfing putting on a show in your own backyard.

Seth Moniz, Hawaii, 2015 VANS Jr Pro Champion

I had the pleasure of photographing the 2nd oldest running surf contest in the world again this year. It is a contest that I have been attending since I was a little grommet. More post will come showing some of my favorite shots from the week.

ECSC 2014 - What an Event

Between media deadlines, photo processing, social media, and shooting; I missed updating the blog. ECSC this year got off to a lackluster start. There was great surfing in what amounted to minuscule surf. On Friday morning, it looked like you could practically skate across the ocean.

ECSC 2014 - Longboard

A change occurred on Saturday, though, with a wind-driven swell bringing surf in the morning that picked up throughout the day. The Vans Pro and Vans Pro Jr heats were on with excellent surfing by all. It was only a precursor for Sunday which greeted contestants with a heavy wind-swell breaking outside of the jetty. All of the big names began lighting it up - Patrick Gudauskas, Luke Davis, Tristan Guilbald, Nathaniel Curran, and Tanner Gudauskas.

ECSC 2014 Vans Pro - Patrick Gudauskas

ECSC 2014 Vans Pro - Raphael Seixas

At the end of the weekend, the unimaginable happened. Michael Dunphy dropped into a bomb of a wave, fired off the bottom, and snapped a cutback that sent water pluming thirty feet in the air. He disappeared from view for a moment behind another swell only to violently hit the lip with another powerful snap. The crowd went crazy sensing something special.

ECSC 2014 Vans Pro - Michael Dunphy

As the time wound down, Dunphy's 2-score total held, making him the first VB-local to win the East Coast Surfing Championships since Wes Laine did it 33-years ago. What an awesome way to finish the weekend.

ECSC 2104 Vans Pro Champion Michael Dunphy

As I write this, Michael just won the WRV Outer Banks Pro to make this an August that he will not soon forget. Congratulations Michael!

ECSC 2014 - Thursday, August 24

It was a beautiful if you are a seascape photographer; however if you are a surfer, you probably have another description for it. Storm clouds to the north and rainbow over Rudee Inlet greeted us as we trickled into the parking lot. Both dissipated later in the day as the contestants struggled through small, sporadic wind chop.

The Men's Vans Pro round of 96 and the Women's Hi-Fi Pro were completed despite the lack of surf. An occasional gem would connect from the outside in. Tough day to be a competitor.

Cody Thompson, Vans Pro

Tomorrow is supposed to be even flatter so I'll be surprised if the Van's Jr Pro goes off. Luckily, Surfline is calling for some waves this weekend. Pray for surf.

ECSC 2014 Wednesday, Aug 20

Today we were greeted with a beautiful sunrise and some small but contestable surf. I'm always amazed at what these kids can do with minimal conditions. Asher Nolan won the Tautog's Pro receiving a spot in the Van's Pro and a check for $2k.

Asher Nolan - Taugtog's Pro Winner

Both the Junior Van's Pro and the Van's Pro first round heats were completed. The heat sheets and results will be posted at the United States Surfing Federation site. My favorite shot from yesterday was Gabriel Farias airing out over some gulls.  Incredible.

Gabriel Farias - Round 1 Heat 8 Van's Pro

More action from yesterday can be seen on ECSC360. Remember to follow me on Twitter @TravisOwney or on Facebook for updates.

2014 East Coast Surfing Championships Preview

I'm excited to say that this will be my third year teaming up with ECSC360 to photograph the East Coast Surfing Championships in Virginia Beach since Lee Rosenberg of East Beach Photography drafted me over lunch one afternoon. ECSC360 has done an incredible job providing media coverage for all of the activities that occur during the championships while promoting the individuals that make up the media team.

I'll be arriving in town Tuesday night, August 19 and will be on the beach Wednesday morning for the start of the main event. If you are coming down to join the festivities please stop by to say hi. You should be able to find me somewhere along the water's edge wearing a ECSC360 t-shirt and draped in camera gear. Here is a sampling from the 2013 contest:

I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing you there. Follow me on Twitter @TravisOwney for updates throughout the competition and view photos on either Facebook (follow Travis Owney) or on Travis Owney Photography. Oh...if you are coming to the oceanfront or not, please pray for waves!

Lesson Learned: The Value of Being Prepared

Before heading down to the oceanfront this past weekend to photograph the East Coast Surfing Championships, I went through the usual ritual of checking my equipment and ensuring that I had everything that I needed. On a previous venture, I got burned when I got down to the beach and realized that I left all of my memory cards at home. There wasn't even one in the camera! I ended up making a quick trip to the nearest Office Depot and shelled out $100 for a 4 gb card. To say that I triple check everything now is an understatement.

With all of the contestants, their families, locals, and the regular tourists in town; beach parking was at a premium. Anyone who knows Virginia Beach knows that finding reasonable parking during the tourist season is a bit tough but I have Buster. Yes my beach cruiser's name is Buster. :-) It is even painted on the side. I'm not making this up. I guess the crew at Haro thought it was a personal touch to individually name the bikes they built. Better yet, it has a note painted on it that I am a Zimzala, someone that is happiest with their toes in the sand. How they knew that I have no clue! Anyway, I added a basket to the back of Buster that is perfect for carrying my camera bag, enabling me to grab a parking space at the Convention Center on 19th and bike down to the beach thus avoiding the bumper to bumper traffic.

What I didn't count on is that the new Bigma lens mounted on the Nikon D300 was too large to fit in my current camera bag. I made the hasty decision to leave my bag behind and just take the camera and a pouch of CF cards. It was a minimalist approach but really all I needed for day, or so I thought. The first lesson hit me when a proud father came up and said that he would purchase every photo of his son surfing the Quicksilver grom competition that I shot. I reached into my pocket for my business card only to realize that I had packed them in my camera bag. I seriously doubt that he remembered my website name so I left a fairly large sale on the sand that morning.

The second lesson came from an incredibly nice woman that ordered a couple photos of her husband surfing the open event. After she placed the order, she emailed me inquiring on whether or not I had any photos of him on the award stand. It was definitely a proud moment and having the image to keep the moment alive forever would have been a great thing. While shooting on Sunday, I briefly considered shooting a couple photos of each of the award presentations but not being the "official photographer" of the event, I figured I was better off catching the ongoing action shoots while the rest of the photographers were distracted with the podium. Another opportunity buried in sand and saltwater that day.

So the point is that being prepared doesn't stop with ensuring that your equipment is ready and your gear is packed. It is being able to foresee the potential opportunities and ensuring that you are ready to make the most of the opportunity. For the lack of a $.10 business card and 5 minutes every hour shooting trophy presentations, I probably cost myself a couple hundred dollars. I've added it to my lessons learned for the next upcoming event. You can be sure that there will photos of trophies as well as the action!

2008 ECSC Weekend

To say that I was looking forward to this year's East Coast Surfing Championships is an understatement to say the least. This the first chance that I have gotten to attend since I moved back to the area after being out of state for the last 13 years. It is amazing how much this event continues to grow. In addition to the pro/am surfing, there was a skate/bmx demos, pro/am volleyball, pro/am skimboarding, multiple concerts, the Miss ECSC bikini contests, and the Beach Cornhole Championships. The VB Jaycees once again put on a great event.

Friday night we caught the Smithereens (yes, they are still recording/touring) at the 5th St. stage and I was shocked at good they sounded, possibly better than 15 years ago. I guess somethings do improve with age. Saturday and Sunday were spent shooting photos of the surfing/skimboarding action and the Miss ECSC contest. To lighten the load, I biked down with just my camera and single lens - the monster Bigma - so I opted to forego the volleyball and skate photos and concentrate on the surfing. It definitely helped that mother ocean decided to play nice this year providing the contestents with ragged 3-footers on Saturday that cleaned up fairly nice on Sunday, leading to some of the best action that I heard they've had in years.

One shoutout - The band Jack Move played on Sunday. I never heard of them before but they absolutely rocked with a ska/punk sound (think Tweed Sneakers or mighty Mighty Bosstones). Awesome show.

The Sigma 50-500mm is heavy but exceptionally sharp for a lens with that much zoom range. I absolutely love it! Initially I was nervous that the focus wouldn't track fast enough to keep up with the speeding riders but I used it a couple of weeks ago to shoot hydroplane racing and it proved to track just fine. If it can handle boats at 150 mph, then it should manage surfers. Once I loaded the memory cards to Lightroom, I was estatic at how well they images turned out. Very little processing was needed other than rejecting the misses and converting the RAW files to DNGs before then adjusting the contrast, highlights, shadows, and saturation. For the most part, I was able to do this by processing the first image in a set and then syncing the rest.

The images can be seen in the following gallery. Please feel free to comment on them as you please.

http://owney.smugmug.com/gallery/5779588_DRm2d/1/357634871_gvYpS#P-1-15

The Rock-N-Roll Half Marathon and the Neptune Festival are next two big events in line. I'm going to be running/limping/crawling in the RnR so no photos this year but I'm looking forward to the Neptune Classic surf competition. Later.