Kayak Surfing at The Gower

[dirtbiker]

Just a few shots from a trip to The Gower, Wales:

1.
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb243/dirtbiker161/IMG_7259-1.jpg

2.
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb243/dirtbiker161/IMG_7173.jpg

3.
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb243/dirtbiker161/IMG_7204-1.jpg

4.
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb243/dirtbiker161/IMG_7183.jpg

5.
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb243/dirtbiker161/IMG_7264-1.jpg

Seemed to have real problems getting the exposure correct due to the white of the breaking waves, does anyone have any tips for this?

Edit: The EXIF should be intact and I've tweaked the levels on most of the shots to try to bring out the paddler a bit more.

[jim9449]

Not sure maybe a polarised filter might take the glare from the water!

[dirtbiker]

Good thinking, it's about time I tried out a polariser so I've ordered one...

Cheers!

[Bignerd]

exposure off of water can be tricky. I recently dealt with it myself. To compensate for the exposure, I worked in manual. The sunny sixteen rule works nicely. Worst case, you tweak the exposure a bit (instant gratification on a digital camera is perfect for this). The rule is on sunny days, with the sun sufficiently high in the sky, use f/16 @ 1/ISO.

You are photographing action, so you want a fairly high shutter speed. Set ISO to 400, work at 1/500 set f stop to 11 - 16

I dont know how sunny it was out there. Open up a little more as needed. You want the exposures to work for the faces. Take a couple of test shots out of the water to validate the aperture.

[dirtbiker]

Cheers for that Larry, I was working in Av mode with the lens stopped down a bit to try and maintain sharpness at 300mm. Probably about time I switched to Manual anyway so I'll give it a go next time I'm shooting paddlers...

[jevidon]

the exposure is definitely flat, but I don't think adjusting exposure would have eliminated all of your problems there. It looks like you were almost shooting directly towards the reflections of the sun, which will dominate your frame regardless of a circ-polarizer. Perhaps try exposing for the ambient and getting the silhouette of the kayaker. Or also you could try using flash as a fill for the faces while you get the ambient dialed down.

[dirtbiker]

As you say, the conditions were less than ideal with the sun position, I did take a couple of nice ones of people paddling out with the person and boat as a silhouette but it's not so good for the action shots.

I'm not sure that a fill flash would have worked because I was shooting at 300mm and the sun was so bright?

I've got a CPL for my next lot of shots and I'm off to Slovenia for two weeks of paddling on Sunday so will hopefully get some nice ones there.

Thanks for all the advice.

[khall]

You need to up the shutter speed for sure, but none of the pictures have really good focus on the person in the Kayak.

[manutd101]

These are definetely OOF, and seem a little oversharpened maybe?