Surfing in Alaska!

Alaska is one of my favorite destinations, especially during fall and winter. When visiting the state back in 2018, I came across a usual sight — surfers paddling into the middle of the the Turnagian Arm. I normally associate surfing with warmer destinations such as Hawaii, Southern California, Australia’s Gold Coast and Portugal. So to see surfers in Alaska was a pleasant surprise. Seward is quite a hot spot for surfing. Turnagain Arm, in particular is an exciting spot as the silt changes all the time and makes the waves quite unpredictable. 

It was around 8 pm in the evening. I had my 90-280 lens on my Leica SL and fired off a few shots. The surfers were sillouheted by the setting sun. The light itself was harsh, but the thick cloud cover helped cover the landscape in a wonderful warm reddish tinge. Sadly, I didn’t do multiple exposures to capture more data for manipulating the image in the post. 

A few days ago, when playing around with my new preset, I decided to use it with these old photos, and ended up with this high-key image — something I really like when it comes to capturing surfers in action. (Here is an old photo from 2021, which is one of my favorites.) I used a linear gradient in Camera Raw to lower the contrast in the background, before converting the image to B&W. I really like how these these images turned out. 

February 13, 2022. San Francsico