White water surfing

[barabe]

Hello, this is my first surfing shoot.

This is actually taken on the St-Laurence river just south of Montreal, approx. 1000km away form the nearest ocean. The surfers have no forward motion because of an ethernal wave, they can only do side to side motion and tricks on the wave. It is easy for me to go back and shoot again and i want to do so in a very near future. I would like to know what i should do to get really amazing shots at this site. I have basically two positions i can be to take the shots, side and front because of sharp cliff and nasty current. The sun was going down and the surfers were in the shadow so i had to use high ISO to be able to get fast enough speed to freeze the action, Is that what is wanted on a surf shot or is a bit of motion desirable. I have a few other shots on my flicker.
Any other comment is more than welcome.



Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/1250)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 238 mm
ISO Speed: 800
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off

[Trader]

The color of the water looks artificial to me. I think I would try to work on that with a curves adjustment on the blue and green color channels.

I have done some surfing shoots on the ocean and they are not that easy. If your are interested, they are on my flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/standud...7618649585548/ I was shooting from the shore quite a distance away from where the waves were breaking, I had to use a 300 mm lens to the the shots I did.

Shooting with a slower shutter speed will show some motion in both the water and surf. That can be either good or bad depending on how it comes out and what you are looking for, Try a couple and see if you like them. Can you change the angle at which you are shooting to get more straight on with the subject? I thinks tha would make for an interesting take on it. Hope some of that helps.

[barabe]

Thank you Trader for the comments, like i said i will go back and shoot on another nice warm day. I will try different exposures to see what the outcome will be. There is only two different vantage points to shoot in the area, the angle that you see in the image above and head on like the image below any other perspective would be pure suicide because of the cliff and rapids. The water color is as it was that day, no PP has been done to the shot at all, not even croping, the color is the reflection of the sky i had at the time of shoot.

PS you do have some cool shots on flickr.

[bigpipe]

Its about time they fixed up white water mountain... They wehre the worst water slides in the park...boring and slow...lets hope they use this area well...

[barabe]

Originally Posted by bigpipe

Its about time they fixed up white water mountain... They wehre the worst water slides in the park...boring and slow...lets hope they use this area well...

I have no clue of what you are talking about!! This is not an amusement park, these are rapids on the st-laurence river in Montreal Canada, There is nothing fake about this wave and the sharp rocks that create it.....