Morning rounds

One day. Three different surf breaks. Five photo sessions. Fabulous!
 
The big swell from Nemo was almost straight out of the north. A pure north swell, especially a big swell, makes finding a surf break that's working around here a bit of a challenge with lots of just driving around looking, making the morning rounds.

Jobos? Messy and windblown .Bad enough they postponed the competition for a day. Middles? The same. Surfers? Not bad but windblown and really nobody out. Wilderness? Big and more sheltered from the wind but not lining up. Only four or five people out. But I got a few good shots.

Another surfer told me Mangalitos was going off. I stopped at Punta Borinquen on the way out from Wilderness and shot a few photos of a couple of the pros from the competition having fun on a day off.

On to Mangalitos. I've never shot at this break before. In fact I didn't even know where it was until I asked a friend for directions. Turns out it's right at what we divers call the "alternate entrance" to  Natural. (Surfers call the little beach/surf break at Natural "Gas Chambers.") I don't know how often this little spot goes off, but it was working  this day!

I had such a great session there I decided to go back for an afternoon session. WOW! The light completely changed. The waves turned this incredible icy translucent green. The barrels just kept coming and the surfers were getting every one.

The other wonderful part of the afternoon session is Elaine went along. She usually doesn't go on surf shoots but this one she did. She got to see all of this first-hand, not just in the pictures.

We still had one more stop to make. I started to go back to Wilderness but got sidetracked to Punta Borinquen again and yet another amazing but totally different session.

As the light started to fade, we turned west for one more set of photos

You can see the best of all five sessions on our website, PuertoRicoSurfPhoto.com and you can see a condensed set, the very best of the best on our Flickr page.

Wow! What a day. It may be the single best surf photography day I've ever had. And that's saying something!