Before the Storm…
…of people that is. You’ve seen this beach many times before but not quite from this perspective. This beach, in Manasquan New Jersey, is popular for surfers and beach goers alike. The inlet from many of my boat shots is right behind me.
I love what this crop does to this scene…
Single shot from my Canon XTI with Sigma 10-20 lens processed through Lightroom
Snapshot Moment Froze Without A Sound….
No you can’t hear the roaring ocean in the background but I’ll tell you that these surfers showcased their skills well under the stormy conditions.
Anyone know the theme? Popular song in the eighties….hint, hint!
Processing: Topaz Simplify with Biz Sum preset and then added Lightroom Cream Tone preset finished with vignette.
The Tale of Three…
When they arrived there weren’t many surfers braving the elements so they hung around presumably debating whether or not to tackle the conditions. After a few minutes they opted to put the boards aside and go get their skim boards. A safer bet is what I imagined they were thinking.
Shot Settings: Canon XTI and Tamron 17-50mm @ f11, 1/750 sec, iso 200 at 24mm.
What’s Behind the Silhouette…
I ventured down to the beach to see if last night’s noreaster was still having an effect on the waves in Manasquan. Wow…. it sure was! The wave sets, as I was told, were between 7-10 feet and just pounding the beach. This was about as menacing as I’ve ever seen it and it didn’t let up for the 3 hours I spent there.
I spoke to several surfers while I was there and got some great information about the mindset of a surfer in these conditions. Some guys jumped right in and others, like these 3 high school boys, were much more hesitant. Eventually all three of them went in and surfed a few large waves and I would say they performed pretty darn well given the tenacity of the waves. They got my respect!
Portrait of Passion…
This is Mike from Maryland and met him while taking shots of the 59th Street Pier in Ocean City. You’ve got to be very passionate for surfing to get in the water while the temperature is barely in the 50′s. Mike said it wasn’t too bad with the wetsuit. Better him than me…
Wrapped…
I wanted to do something creative with this sequence so I Googled “How to create a triptych in Lightroom” and got quite a few informative sites, here’s the one I used for this triptych. The first problem I encountered had to do with arranging the photo’s in the correct order. I couldn’t figure out how to do it so I used this resource…..the web what would we do without it? The next bump in the road involved changing the existing template from vertical to landscape, the solution can be found here as well. Once I got through all those steps I saved the file as a jpeg, opened it up in Elements and added the title, the white background layer and the drop shadow. All in all it only took me 15 minutes to create and I’m pretty happy with the results.
You can see a larger version here!
Wet 2….
The inlet at Manasquan is a great place to hang out during the summer, people are out and about enjoying all the activities associated with summer. Along with all the boats exiting and entering the inlet your likely to see plenty of snorkelers, fishermen, crabbers, kite-fliers, sand castle builders, swimmers and even a few drunkards.
The colors of this scene of surfers were pretty bland so I experimented with several looks and finally decided on this B+W. I opted to go with a contrasty look to really make the scene pop…..do you like?
Shot at f/4, 1/750 sec, iso 200 and 200mm
