Learning Surf Photography Instagram Wave Of The Week

I’m putting up a new photo every day on Instagram, and each week I’ll do a break down of the most popular image I’ve posted so you can find out a bit more about it, this tim the wave of the week is an empty fisheye barrel shot:

It was taken with my Canon 60D and Tokina 10-17mm fisheye lens in an Aquatech CR-60 housing with LP-3 8″ dome port and pistol grip.

The spot is one I surf a lot, I first surfed there over 15 years ago and it was one of the very first surf spots I took photo’s of, using a disposable water proof camera.

It has many moods and is very tide dependant, and when the tidal range is 6m+ that means it can change in minutes from an easy, playful shoulder to a hollow, dangerously shallow slab.

Here’s the angle from my GoPro which I was holding in my mouth using my DIY mouth mount.

The GoPro dips under water just after this frame grab, meaning my head was under water when I took the actual photo above, that might help to explain the 45 degree angle it’s at, although I don’t mind it, the wave still looks good and almost natural at this angle, which I think gives it a bit more charm than a perfectly level shot.

When shooting form the land I always try and get the horizon level, but water shots are different for me, I think if you’re a surfer it feels natural to not be totally level when you’re paddling out and duckdiving, fisheye shots especially have so much distortion that keeping the horizon straight isn’t such a big deal.

Camera Settings

I had the camera in shutter priority at 1/1000, and it chose an aperture of f5, there was plenty of light so the ISO was 100 and I wanted the full fisheye effect so I had the lens at 10mm.

I was shooting above and below the water that day so I had the lens set to autofocus.

That’s the behind the scenes look at this photo, I’ll post another one next week, if you see a photo on my Instagram account that you want to see in the wave of the week slot make sure you like it and leave a comment and I’ll talk about that one next time.


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