costa rica film

on my way home from the airport yesterday, i picked up my film from costa rica. i'm happy about most of it, a little bummed about other parts.

so it goes.

some are taken with the biggest camera i own, and others with the smallest... that's not important...i just thought of it and found it interesting.

here is a small sample of them... the rest of the photos are on their way up onto section five of the costa rica section on http://www.fluidmotionphoto.com/.

siestas and olas

i stayed in costa rica after the picaresque trip ended (i'm still here for one more week)...
this morning, i was disappointed with a super crowded lineup (about 70 guys spread over 2 or 3 peaks that are close to each other), and pretty much all closeouts. i thought that was going to be it for playing in the ocean for the day.

i went with my roommate to the grocery store in the early afternoon, but forgot about their daily siesta---closed from 12-3.

We had some time to kill, so we went down to a stretch of beach way away from the main peaks and went bodysurfing. it's the best way to have fun when it's clean and hollow, but closing out.

it was so fun, that we went back this evening with the camera and got a few photos. i'm sure we'll do it again over the next week, because by the time we got back out there the light was about gone... it made for beautiful water for a while, but then blurry photos after that. anyway, here are some of the photos we got.

travis, my roommate down here, shot the photos of the guy in the wetsuit (me -- yes, i know...a wetsuit in costa rica?? well, the winds have been super strong offshore and there's some cold water upwelling...i'd rather be comfortable than shivering.)

not bad for one of his first times shooting in the water, eh? the last photo is obviously way blurry cause of low light, but it's my favorite wave that i caught this evening, so i'm putting it up anyway. if you use your imagination, you can see the shore on the far right, and the lip/wave wrapping around the black and orange blob in the middle.

the empty waves and ones of travis (no wetsuit) are by me. hopefully we'll have a chance to get some better ones in the next few days.

updated

the costa rica gallery is being uploaded to my site as i write this. there are 4 sections, almost 200 total photos. at some point, i'll narrow it down much more, but for now, there are a lot of photos...

take some time, when you have some free time, and take a look if you want.

the gallery doesn't include any of the photos that i shot on film. those will be added later, once it's feasible to do so. i'm hoping that a few of the most interesting photos have yet to be seen by anyone other than the lab technician... but we'll see.

picaresque in central america

i meant to update this as last week progressed, but there really wasn't any time after shooting, eating, catching a few waves for myself here and there, uploading photos, and most of all, travelling around to find waves and/or waiting for the tide to be right.

last week was the final trip for the filming of picaresque. i continued my roll as the still photographer. so, after this third trip, i was fortunate enough to be able to shoot photos in france, new york, and costa rica. (photos from france and new york are on my website and/or farther back in this blog.) there are many more on my website than on here though. http://www.fluidmotionphoto.com/, for those who don't know.

this trip consisted of dustin miller (filmmaker/editor), eric hires (water cinematography), myself as the photographer, mikey detemple (director, producer, and surfer), and surfers harrison roach from australia, scotty stopnik from california, and surfer/shaper chris christenson from california. they were all truly great guys to travel/work with.

anyway, this trip was like the others in that good waves didn't come to us super easily. but, we did end up scoring some really good sessions, which is all that we really needed. we had to deal with 50 mph offshore winds almost every day, but occasionally we managed to find the short windows of time throughout the day where the wind was more mellow and the tide was right. harrison had one session, though, where he surfed right through some of the worst of the wind...and he surfed it very well. when we couldn't find those windows of good conditions, we took a chance and headed a few hours south where luckily, the wind was a bit lighter.

enough of the semi surf report though... i can let the photos do the talking for that. it was just important to note that the waves didn't come easily, because that was such a huge part of this trip. i haven't been lucky enough to have a september sessions type trip, where we could just surf and shoot/surf waves "as good as waves get" for an entire trip.

that is quite rare, though, i'm sure. the time and effort taken to get good waves, and even surfing the less than perfect waves, should add plenty of personality to this film. many people, after watching the teaser and/or trailer, comment that it makes them want to surf. The reason for that, i think, is because although the quality of waves in the film are great, they are not so crazy perfect that they are unattainable.

i won't name surf spots here, even though they are hardly secret (at all). but, i do want to mention that joe walsh from witch's rock surf camp helped organize our stay at the beautiful cabinas las olas in northern costa rica. it was a great little eco friendly place with cabinas, a restaurant, ping pong (we had some great matches, even in the wind), and a short walk to multiple wave options.

i think that's a decent basic summary of the trip... nice people, nice places, nice times, and with some work, patience, and imagination, really nice waves.
here are a small sample of photos for now, until i decide which ones to put on my site.
pura vida.