While the Woolly-necked Storks are a relativly new addition to a Ballito morning, the Ballito waves have been there forerever. Childhood memories of trips on a twin rut sand track through cane fields from Chaka’s Rock to Ballito have been overwhelmed by the subsequent explosion of roads and resorts (not to mention residential estates and malls) with only the occasional cottage from that past era still surviving. The rocks and waves of my childhood endure unchanged and time spent watching them evokes the feeling of contemplation while gazing at the flickering flames of a camp fire.

At times the excitement of watching surfers carving paths across the smooth faces interrupts the peace but the real joy is the uniqueness of each wave and attempts to capture something of the ephemeral beauty are only revealed later when reviewing images and the occasional frame captures the feeling of the dynamic scene. The contrast between the images of the undisturbed waves and those carved by surfers add a tension to a session and stimulates creative flexibility by having to adapt wave by wave to achieve almost contrasting images. I find it better to post-process the different types of images at separate sessions as the feeling and mood is so different that a suitable headspace is easier to achieve if focussing on one image type at a time.

Wave photos with Fuji XT1 and Fuji 55-200mm f3.5-4.8 lens. Surfer photos with Nikon D810 and Nikon 500mm f4 lens.

Exposure is difficult with backlit water drops and the shaded side of a surfer. It is definitely a situation for manual exposure and the high dynamic range of modern sensors is very useful for trying to extract an image that reproduces the dynamic range our eyes perceive.