Went down for Easterns a couple weeks ago. Some of the best surf I've seen for an East Coast contest.
damn!! epic conditions! no doubt best conditions I have ever seen for and EC contest. Those kids are ripping too.
Thanks for sharing. It was a really good day that day. That kid who won the LB I think is from Maine (NE). He was pretty impressive.
I was mainly shooting my son but shot some of the other heats and free surfing too. I still haven't processed a lot of the pictures from that week. I probably took over 2,000 pictures that week. The waves, water color and light were pretty much perfect for shooting on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Thanks. That week my results really reached the next level after shooting along side Mez for an hour and having a conversation about how he chooses the settings on the camera. We were shooting with the same camera and he told me one tiny thing that I never would have come up with on my own. That one little setting change probably tripled the number of tack sharp pictures I'm getting. I'm now getting tack sharp 20 shot sequences that are tack sharp from start to finish where previously I might have only had 3 or 4 keepers out of 20. This is probably my favorite shot taken the day after getting that tip. This is part of a 20 shot barrel sequence that is this good from start to finish. This is my favorite shot of the set because of the set-up with the boy paddling out. The raw file is even better than what you are seeing on this site.
Here is another shot I'm fond of. While the air wasn't landed I did get a good sequence of it. What stands out is how sharp the logos on the board are. In the raw file I can see the shapers signature along the stringer of the board and the picture was taken from 100 yards away.
EPIC. I know they struggled with the decision to pull the trigger on the contest with Florence having just barely moved out of the southern part of the state. Looks like amazing conditions.
Basically, I was always shooting at the lowest ISO for the available light.........thinking the low ISO would result in the cleanest images without noise or graininess. By shooting at a higher ISO you can shoot at a higher F-stop. This greatly improved the accuracy and tracking of the Autofocus by increasing the available depth of field. Take notice of the very last photo I posted where the rider is fins free. Notice how the pier is slightly out of focus. That picture was taken with my old way of doing things. Now go to the first post in the thread and note how tack sharp the pier is in addition to the surfers. My location and the riders location in relation to the pier are close to the same. The difference is the real sharp shots are at a higher ISO and higher F-stop.
The level of surfing going down in the U14 and U12 divisions was off the charts. This may be the best generation of young East Coasters since the Hobgood/Lopez era.
