Surfing Phantoms in Jeffrey's Bay, South Africa

There are three very close breaks on Jeffrey's Bay main beach. Dolphin Beach is a beach break, meaning a sandy bottom and waves break randomly based on the days contour of the beach bottom. It's called Dolphin Beach because in the evening you literally see the Dolphins surfing the same waves you are on. Next to that is Kitchen Windows, named by an old timer at J-Bay because he could see the break out of his kitchen window. After that a restaurant opened in front of the break called, "Kitchen Windows." It is a point break, meaning the waves break the same way all the time as they are formed by a reef on the ocean bottom. Today Kitchen Windows was a bit crowded so my coach, Kelvin, decided we would go to Phantoms about 100 yards next door. Why Phantoms? Because while the waves are as good as Kitchen Windows, there are fewer people. You see the break is a lot farther out which means a long paddle. No worries, I'm very fit. Ha! My arms were rubber when I got out there. It was great though to surf a point break, knowing that the waves would generally break in the same spot every time. The tricky part is that you have to keep yourself in that spot. Harder than you'd think. Another first for me was surfing at night. It wasn't totally dark as we paddled in but all of the lights were on. You'd think it would be scary, but it wasn't. It was actually very peaceful and relaxing. What a great day!

Endless Summer Surf

The West Coast of South Africa has many great surf spots: Noordhoek, Long Beach, Llundadno, Big Bay, Melkbos, and many more. One of the best, however, is Elands Bay, also known as the Jeffrey's Bay of the West Coast. It was made famous in the surf movie, The Endless Summer. Well I will be visiting this weekend on a surf tour run by my friends at Surf Emporium in Muizenberg. We'll be leaving on Friday afternoon and coming back to Cape Town Sunday afternoon. Elands Bay is only about 100 miles North of Cape Town and a surf is planned when we get there. We're staying in a B&B on a real working ranch. Elands Bay is also known for its hiking, wildlife observation and pre-historic cave paintings. Our guide and Coach will be Karel Lewy, an ISA Level 2 coach and Naturalist. Really looking forward to the trip! Also looking forward to using my new board and making plenty of images!

http://www.vensterklip.co.za

Walk on a Fiery Sunset - 248/365

I continue to post my 365 images as I get to them. It was tough enough to make the images let alone post them everyday. To that end I am still catching up and I plan to make a small book of all of the images. I'll have more information on that as soon as I get some information on details and possible publication methods. I want to get back to real photographs that you can hold in your hand and not just see on the computer. Nothing beats having an album.

I made this image one evening when I saw this beautiful fiery sunset and there were a couple of people walking on the beach. I wanted to convey how nice and simple life can be by just taking a walk with a loved one. I made this with my Fuji camera and I made three exposures and combined them to be able to get the bright light of the sun and the shadows in the same image.