Three Amigos at Surfside

The other day, my wife and I, along with our dog Shadow, traveled down to Surfside, Texas to meet up with some friends surfing off the jetty. They’re surfing “Legends” Kelly and Jeff and Kelly’s girlfriend “Cooha” Jenn. Kelly and Jeff have surfed since they were kids and have been on a few surfaris together chasing the waves. The reason they are “Legends” is that they are over fifty and still surfing. While Jenn has not been surfing that long, she is “Cooha” because she is a surfer babe who’s not afraid to mix it up with the dudes on the waves. That is as “gnarly” as my surfing lingo gets “Bra”.

It was a nice sunny day with the wind blowing steadily out of the southeast pushing the swells to the shore. We walked out towards the end of the jetty where they entered the water with their boards by timing the leaps between the cresting waves. I was shooting with my 28-300 mm lens at a 400 ISO, 1/1000 sec, f11, and under exposing by 1 stop on my Canon 5D mark II. Once they were in the water, the waves and wind moved them away from the jetty quickly, so most of the shots are maxed out to 300mm. As a result , I cropped the pictures you see below, and used Perfect Resize to enlarge them to 8×10’s and Lightroom to reduce the noise. (One of these days maybe I’ll justify 400mm telephoto and a 1.5x or 2x extension tube.) I did get a series of shots of one surfer shredding the waves fairly close to the jetty that I thought came out well. Below are the results.

This was my first trip down to the beach on the Gulf since Hurricane Ike. I was told that Surfside did not suffer the devastating damage that Galveston did since it was on the good side of the storm (if there is such a thing) with the winds pushing water away from the beach town. After their morning surf was finished we had some lunch, a few beers, and a weird blue Icee concoction on the patio at Pirates Alley. Our afternoon was finished and we were ready to head back home, while they headed back to the jetty to catch some afternoon waves. Mahalo – Kelly, Jenn, and Jeff, we enjoyed the day and are ready to do it again. Happy Birthday Jeff – keeping shredding. Maybe, I’ll rent a 400mm lens from LensProToGo for the next trip.