FalseBay: The onshore sessions

In the 10 to 12 years of shooting surf photos in False Bay I have never bothered with the onshore sessions, until last season.
The previous winter was terrible for us in the Bay and I can only remember 3 days of good swell that was worth shooting and hence my image count was down.

The main reason I generally don’t bother shooting the onshore is that the photo’s usually come out pretty bad and are not suitable for editorial use.
The images tend to have a horrible texture because of the messy conditions. There is also a lot going on in the image with lots of spray and waves breaking in the foreground.
In short it is difficult to get a good clean image suitable for publication.

To counter these negative conditions one needs to adapt their technique.
This means one generally shoots tighter to focus on the action. Also one needs to shoot from a higher angle and a bit more of a side on angle helps too.
Most importantly though, is you need to have surfers that can give you action packed images.

These 25 images are some of my favorite from last season’s attempt to shoot the onshore sessions.