Huntington Beach Spring Break 2012 Surfing

Huntington Beach April 2012It’s spring break “week” of 2012 in Huntington Beach and with temperatures in the upper 70′s, the beach is where everyone seems to converge. With 5+ft waves, it’s also where you’ll find surfers.

I missed the big 8 and 10 ft waves this past weekend including the Vans Pier Classic surfing competition, but today I headed out for a couple of hours of shooting surfers. There were nice 4-5 ft waves with the occasional 8+, most were nice and clean not choppy at all.

The south side of the pier had the best sets in the afternoon. There were several photographers out, some new but mostly the usual ones I see taking pictures of the action.

The waves were breaking further out, closer to the second half of the pier. Shooting in the afternoon is more challenging on the south side as the sun is right overhead, casting terrible shadows. But I made do.

Like always, photographing surfers takes a little patience, waiting for the sets to arrive then anticipating who is going to take the wave and knowing when to start snapping the photos.

Want to know how many pictures I took in a two hour period? Over 320 images. Of those, how many am I going to use here on this blog? Four! Well, at least for now. Mostly because it takes time to process and I have other projects that I’m working on.

As always, if you’re one of the surfers and would like a digital copy of your image, simply send me an email and it’s yours!

All photos were taken with a Nikon D7000 and Nikon 80-200AF f/2.8 D-ED lens. Want to learn more about photographing surfers? Read this free beginners guide to to surf photography. Want to know more about Nikon Camera’s? Take a look at the Nikon Buying Guide.

Below are a few pictures from today’s outing. I have several of each series, these are just a few samples. Sorry I can’t post them all up at this time. Continue reading Huntington Beach Spring Break 2012 Surfing

2012 NSSA State Championships at Huntington Beach

Huntington Beach female Surfer

Female surfer gives a thumbs up to her supporters

Today was the second day of the 2012 NSSA State Championships at the south side of the Huntington Beach pier.

There were many talented college, high school and middle school surfers out competing. But like yesterday, at best there were 1-2 ft waves with the occasional 3-4 ft. It was a challenge for the surfers, not to mention the photographers!

Truthfully, the surfers did a great job and provided some excitement for the spectators. I was shooting from the pier as well as the beach, you know how I like to move around to get different perspectives.

I was there only a couple of hours and splitting my time from the surf competition and the Kite Party. You can find some of the pictures of the kite party on So Cal Daily Photo. As for the the surfing pictures, well like I said it was a challenge.

The event raps up tomorrow, if you plan to attend, you can find the full schedule here. It should prove to be a good final day. It starts at 7 a.m. with the final starting at 2:30 and the awards at 6:30 p.m.

I’ve added a few random pictures from the High School Varsity Womens Quarterfinals, which took place around 11 a.m.

More photos are included below.
Continue reading 2012 NSSA State Championships at Huntington Beach

The Venice Surf Photographers Meetup Group at HB Pier

This morning I spent a few hours at the Huntington Beach Pier along with a few members of the meetup group Venice Surf Photographers.

Although I shoot at the HB Pier often, this was the first time I met up with this group. I arrived early, just before 8 a.m., the rest of group trickled in within the next hour.

The turnout of surfers wasn’t as high as my previous trip a few days earlier, and the waves were a little choppy at two to four feet with the occasional five on the south side of the pier. However, we all made the best of it plus a met a nice group of people with the same passion of photographing surfers.

A couple of photographers (Patrick and Butch) brought out the big guns. Large lenses were the theme of the morning. I’m looking forward to seeing some of their pictures.

On a different note, I have a huge backlog of pictures I’ve taken of surfers in the past several weeks. I’ll start to share some of them in the next few days.

But for now below are a few pictures I took today. And if that’s not enough, be sure to see all the pictures I’ve taken at various surfing competitions in Huntington Beach.
Continue reading The Venice Surf Photographers Meetup Group at HB Pier

Kelly Slater Wins 2011 US Open of Surfing Huntington Beach

Kelly Slater wins US Open of SurfingKelly Slater wins the Mens 2011 Nike US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, while Sally Fitzgibbons wins the Womens US Open of Surfing. I’ve compiled some of the best photos from Sundays final surfing event.

These were the final result:

Final Mens:

  1. Kelly Slater (winner)
  2. Yadin Nicol

Final Womens:

  1. Sally Fitzgibbons (winner)
  2. Lakey Peterson

Final Junior Mens:

  1. Filipe Toledo (Winner)
  2. Kolohe Andino
  3. John John Florence
  4. Conner Coffin

Final Junior Womens:

  1. Lakey Peterson (Winner)
  2. Malia Manuel
  3. Laura Enever
  4. Coco Ho

The final was this past Sunday, while the Junior Men and Women’s took place on Saturday. Overall it was an action packed weekend. I don’t know how many people attended this event on Sunday, but it had to be well over 10 or 20 thousand people.

The beach was standing room only, which made it very difficult to get good photos of the event. While on the Huntington Beach Pier, the south facing side was almost impossible to find a spot along the rail. The spectators and photographers were two to three deep. So that meant that even though I was there by 7:30am, unless I stayed at my post, I could not change locations.

I chose to move around and shoot from different locations, which you will see from the images below. The morning started out cloudy, but by the womens and mens final, the skies cleared up and it was the perfect backdrop for the show that was about to begin.

Kelly Slater was the star of the day, he rode 8 waves with his top two scores being 8.5 and 7.77, while Yadin Nicol had only 3 waves with top two scores of 1.80 and .77. So you can see how it turned out to be one-sided. After Kelly was announced the winner he still waited for a wave to ride in and give a final show for the crowd.

See below for a gallery of pictures from the 2011 US Open of Surfing Finals:
Continue reading Kelly Slater Wins 2011 US Open of Surfing Huntington Beach

Hurley Walk the Walk Video 2011 Surfing Huntington Beach




Benson once again captured a great portion of the Hurley Walk the Walk Fashion show in HD video at the 2011 US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach.

The show took place on Thursday, August 4th in Huntington Beach. Some of the schools that participated in the event were:

  • Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School – Ontario Canada
  • Toms River East High School – New Jersey
  • Kellam High School – Virginia
  • Grossmont High School
  • Corona del Mar High School

Continue reading Hurley Walk the Walk Video 2011 Surfing Huntington Beach

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