In august 2014, I was in Royan, France, capturing some cool surf moves at Pontaillac beach. It was a late afternoon session with the sun already low on the horizon and surfers eager to make the best of tricky wind and water conditions.
All images from this impromptu shoot were captured handheld from the beach at 200mm and cropped thanks to my sensor's generous resolution. Although taken without particular planning and somewhat in a rush, I was pretty happy with some of those images. Things lined up nicely with my main surfer delivering picture-perfect moves and warm and gorgeous light still illuminating the scene.
Because Royan is located at the mouth of the Girond estuary, water doesn't provide the ideal crystal clear, perfect blue color palette typical of other popular surf spots. Instead it is muddy, filled with sediments and provides a colors ranging from greyish green to bronze to beige and brown. The sun already low and the wind maximized this peculiar color palette which provided for a very graphic background.
Lately I have been reconsidering these images with a fresh look at their post-production potential. After all, you're never completely done with an image. Here are a few of them re-processed with a fresh perspective.
Find some of those photographs and others in the sports and action photography section of my portfolio.
