Also know as how to take out your photographer!

Sorry, couldn’t help a bit of tongue in check here. Jason and I headed down to Westport for a day of surfing before the 4^th of July crowds showed up. The weather and surf reports where just too promising not to take advantage of them. It certainly was a far cry from our last trip where the surf was pounding and temperatures so low it was painful to bare hands. A slight marine layer in the morning quickly gave way to sunny skies with calm winds. We were like kids in a candy store.

I wanted to take advantage of the mellow conditions to get some footage of Kiwi surfing in his Ice Kap from Sterling Kayaks. Placing the camcorder in its waterproof container I waded out to chest deep water to get my shots. Kiwi did a great job of placing himself in good positions - most of the time.

Jason 'Kiwi' in the surf. Photo by Steve Weileman

However….it was bound to happen, while slicing down the face of a wave ever so gracefully, his stern got kick around at the last second and he ended up pointing right at me. Never has a bow looked so large!

Cameramen often speak of the sense of detachment you get when shooting behind the camera; as if you’re surrounded by force field or not even there. This accounts for many of the shots we seen over the years of incredible events. In my case, it just about cost me my teeth. At the last second I realized that I need to submerge to get out of Kiwi’s way. Although it certainly got the adrenaline pumping, I thought I had plenty of room between me and his boat overhead.

It wasn’t until reviewing the footage later that we saw just how close his bow actually was to camera and my head. As the bow flies by you can see I haven’t even completely submerged.

Too close!

Tags: Video

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 2:05 am and is filed under Journal Entry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.