A Day at the Beach

I pretty much take my camera wherever I go, and two weekends ago it really paid off. We arrived and selected a nice spot to settle down, catch some rays and make sand castles with our son. Soon a group of guys arrived with their skimboards and started skimboarding right in front of us. They actually almost ran us over a couple of times. They seemed to know what they were doing, so I thought: what a great opportunity to get some action shots. This is not something I have done often, so it was going to be good practice. I walked up and asked if they wold mind if I took some pictures of them. They said sure so I grabbed the camera and dove in.




The Setup

Here is the setup. I tried to shoot with the sun at my back so as to not blow the sky when exposing the skimboarder. I used the 18-70mm lens because it's my longest lens and with the bright sun, max lens aperture was not an issue. I set the camera on shutter priority at 1/500 s since there was plenty of sun. Focus was set to continuous and metering to center-weighted. I shot in burst mode to make sure I got some keepers.

Execution

When the skimboarder started his run, I locked on with the center focus point and followed him until he hit the wave. Then I hit the shutter and followed him until he stopped. This method seemed to work well and I got at least 3 keepers. I wish I had a longer lens so I could get closer to the action. I also think that I should have picked a faster shutter speed in order to blurr the background a bit more.

Results