This entry for the Lens-Artists Challenge is late, there’s no denying it, but in my defence I had a really good excuse: we were in the Maldives. Although I had the opportunity to prepare an entry — and did actually draft my text — between laying on the beach, snorkeling for sharks (and I found one!) watching the sunrise and sunsets or just feasting at the all-inclusive resort there just wasn’t really the will to get it done. So I hope you will all forgive me.

It was the turn of Sofia from Photographias to host the Lens-Artists Challenge last week, and she chose as her theme, ‘Looking Back‘. Referring to previous entries, Sofia observed that we’ve been, ‘posting old photos, full of that charm of a time long gone [and] talked about previous experiences with a longing and emotion that connects us all’. So this week Sofia gave us a simple instruction: ‘Look back at things you love(d) in your life, things that have happened, places you visited that you’d like to experience again’.

From around 2013 to 2018 I used to go to the beach a lot. We finally moved to Portugal for good in 2011, after some mixed experiences during the noughties, and my better half’s son joined us a couple of years later. He was then (and still is) a keen surfer so it wasn’t long before I would join him on his trips to the local beaches to photograph the freestyle surfers there. Like most experiences it starred by accident, we went to Labrego beach one afternoon and there were some surfers there who I photographed. These weren’t good photos, mind you, but the experience intrigued me, so of course I would go with him to one of the many beaches near Aveiro and roll off hundreds of frames through the old Olympus DSLR. After a while these got quite good, even if I say so myself.

I had an Olympus E-620 DSLR, a 12MP camera from 2009, and a 100-300mm zoom lens. Compared to full-frame that was equivalent to a maximum focal length of 600mm, which was a great focal length for surfing photography. On a nice sunny morning I would set the aperture to its widest, about f5,6 if I recall, and with a shutter speed of 1/1000s and the camera set to burst (a princely 3fps) I was all set.

The surfers in and around the beaches of Aveiro were (and still are) a great bunch. Sometimes people can be a bit wary of being photographed by someone wielding a long lens,  but they knew I was with a surfer and was made most welcome. Perhaps the greatest compliment I ever received was from one veteran surfer, who observed that of all the surfing photographers around I was the one who knew how to pick the right moment.

Eventually, after several years of misuse on the beach, the long lens started to fail and loose focus, and I felt that I really couldn’t continue to share my images with the surfing community any longer. At the time I really didn’t have the budget to replace my zoom lens so I moved on to other things, which in my case was an increasing enthusiasm for older film and digital cameras, and that’s where we find ourselves today. 

Dropping a small spoiler, Sofia had mentioned that this week Anne will host the Lens-Artists Challenge and that it will be about one of my favourite topics, Intentional Camera Movement. So if all goes according to plan there might be a connection between this week’s entry in the Challenge, ‘Looking Back’, and what is now this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, which should be following along shortly.

Themes for the Lens-Artists Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can post their images during the week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here, and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag ‘Lens-Artists’.

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https://keithdevereux.wordpress.com/2024/10/24/lens-artists-challenge-320-looking-back/