Looks like summer is approaching an end, or probably for most places other than SoCal, which ‘summer’ may not end until sometime into late October or even November. It’s amazing how things heat up here in the ‘fall’. Nevertheless, for a recent virtual photographic critique, since many of the others were showing their summer beach photographs, I assembled a collection of my San Clemente surfing photographs. Summer and surfing, an idea combination.
I had a wonderful advantage point up on the pier overlooking this popular surf spot. Typically the surf break is an inside set so I did not have to venture out far on the pier. Also the break is towards the pier, so surfers have a tendency to make a cut towards where I was situated, providing me with opportunities similar to the ‘tube rider’ above.
The interesting aspect for me was the quality of my images; all of which were captured on my old Samsung phone and internally processed with the Snapseed app, and that original version is below. A comment from one of my friends about the image quality made me think about this and I decided that I had not worked these images with the RAW or Photoshop combination, so why not?
Net result, I think that I teased out a lot more detail with the RAW-Photoshop combination and I was able to manage the contrast better with the surf break as well as the surfer’s features. Perhaps a little more of a documentary feel than an artistic rendition, such as more detail of the surfers in the background waiting for their turn, thus losing the primary focus on the surfer. Maybe I need to clone the others out or add a blur layer to make these guys less obvious? It’s art and not meant to be photojournalistic, eh? Nice thing about my cloning process, I perform this on an adjustment layer so it’s easy to delete if the resulting photograph does not have an appearance that I like.
My version of summer fun. And maybe I need to head back over to the pier after the summer crowds dissipate at the end of this month and work with this subject a little bit more…a really nice place at the ocean to work, eh?
Cheers,
Doug
Featured image: San Clemente, Surf-side (121518) copyright Douglas Stockdale 2017
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Book workshop:
I will be leading a Creative Photo Book workshop with the Southeast Center of Photography (SEC4P) later in the Fall of this year. This will be a virtual event on Zoom; November 6 & 7th and 13 & 14th, 2021, 10 AM – 1 PM, EDT (3 hour session each day, with a week between the weekend sessions to work your book-dummy). Registration is now open, and there is a SEC4P membership discount. Just advised that it is half-way sold out. Let me know if you have any questions!
Developing a Creative Photo Book, a virtual (Zoom) workshop I will be leading again in conjunction with Medium Photo, September 11th, 12th, 18th, & 19th, New dates: March 5 – 6, 12 – 13, 2022 More details and sign-up available now at Medium Photo. New Dates!
Singular Images 