My first and last experience with water photography. Mid-day at a very rocky summer right, Baja Sur.
So rocky that it takes booties to get out, but the Body Glove reef walkers I was wearing keep popping off my heels when I'm paddling. After surfing one wave with the booties balled under my soles I've removed them and stuffed them down the back of my trunks. As my wife says, I've got "noassatall" so there's plenty room.I'm sitting wide and picking off the swing sets every 10 minutes or so, and in the meantime snapping shots of Robert cruising the top of the point with a disposable waterproof camera.
A wave comes to me. The section I'm on the edge of breaks hard and shuts someone down easily, and I go. It's a slow roller at first, around shoulder high, but it quickly builds on the inside as it begins to slide across the rocks. The lip stands and throws, and I get a great barrel view, long but not too deep.
The next one comes a little while later, and I'm determined to document the experience. I can get one of those great in-the-barrel perspective shots! This will be great! Take off with the camera in the teeth, get it in hand just in time for the money shot, pull in, try to take a picture, and suddenly I've bogged my inside rail, dropped the camera, and I'm tumbling.
A mad dash ensues as the rest of the set begins to sweep the camera in to the craggy shoreline and certain destruction. I prone out and nearly catch it as I go by, but not quite. Spin around, getting myself between the camera and shore in knee deep water surrounded by razor sharp rocks, only to realize that my god damn booties have escaped from my trunks! Shit!
I drop my board and lunge for the booties, grabbing them and recovering my board by its leash just as the next set washes over me. Somehow the little camera surfaces near me, and I stick the strap in my teeth, grip the rails of my board with bootied hands, and weather the rest of the set. Somehow I manage to avoid getting any cuts or dings.
I make it back outside to find SurferBob asking how the photography is going. I hand him the camera wordlessly.
Oh, and did I get the shot?
No.