7-days until I'll be heading back home to shoot the East Coast Surfing Championships with the
ECSC360 crew. I love photographing surfing. It encompasses everything that I enjoy seeing through the lens of a camera - seascapes, action, beauty, people, and emotion. My first foray into surf photography was back in the 80's when Tony Bailey asked me to come down and shoot with him during an ECSC event. Sometimes I wish I had taken a queue from Aaron Chang and followed a dream of traveling to the world's most incredible surf breaks and photographing the sport's most talented athletes. Fear of the unknown left me lost in the safety net of a boring but steady office job only to occasionally ponder what might have been.
2014 East Coast Surfing Championships
Of course things were much more difficult then. The advent of continuos auto-focus (AI servo mode) and digital cameras revolutionized photography in all sports, especially surfing. Shooting wide-open left little margin for error when focusing on a fast moving surfer carving the face of a pitching wave. Manually focusing a long telephoto on an erratically moving high-speed object was not an easy task. We learned to practice predictive focusing based on both photography and personal surfing experience. The shape of a wave and speed of a wave coupled with the knowledge of the surfer's style enabled us to predict where the next big move would occur and react accordingly. I can only imagine how many hours of shooting that the likes of Don King, Chris Klopf, Jeff Divine, and Warren Bolster put in to develop the vision and split second reactions to capture the amazing images that they did.
2014 East Coast Surfing Championships
Unless you had a bulk film back, you were limited to 36-exposure max per roll. Nowadays it is not surprising to hear that a photographer fired off 36-frames on a single wave. During the first ECSC that I shot in the digital age, I logged close to 2500 photos in a single day. That would equate to 70 rolls of film. A roll of Kodak Elite Color costs approximate $3.00 and processing was another $8.00. 70 rolls would cost $770. Over 5-days, the cost would reach close to $4000. During my youth, I couldn't afford enough film to make it through a week-long contest.
2014 East Coast Surfing Championships
There is still a cost today although it is measured more in time and space as opposed to raw materials. As image files get bigger, the corresponding length of time to download and edit them increases. Likewise, multiple copies of the images must be stored on primary and secondary hard drives and offline storage sites. Add to that the catalog management software to be able to organize and retrieve the images plus the editing software to "develop" the images. From an equipment standpoint, cameras can only handle so many shutter actuations before needing replacement. On average most shutters last 100,000 actuations. It sounds like a lot until you realize that it is easy to shoot 10,000 photos in a week! You quickly realize it is not cheap by any means.
2014 East Coast Surfing Championships
This has led me to taking an old approach to shooting with modern gear. I have returned to the roots of the 36-exposure roll and predictive shooting. Instead of simply firing continually with every drop in, limit exposures to the critical point of action. Over the course of a contest or contests, you learn the styles of the individual surfers. You can determine which moves they are likely to perform based on their style and the wave type. Over the course of a normal day now, I will shoot a couple hundred images. I only need a handful for the news outlets and a few additional for my own portfolio. The key is that each time I depress the shutter button, it is at a decisive moment that will make for an intriguing story-telling image. Channeling the greats from my youth has drastically improved my current approach - better quality, faster delivery, and more efficient expense management.
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