I’m an experienced paddle boarder. I’ve been doing SUP excursions all around the coast of Javea, Denia and Moraira, in Alicante since 2015. The paddle board gives you a very unique vision as you are standing up, as walking, on the sea. Besides you can get really close, depending on the waves and wind conditions, to shore and sea stacks. This way you can discover details hard to find from other kind of boats.
This picture taken February 24th. 2019 is of a sea stack next to Cabo San Antonio. I wanted to take a detailed portrait of L’Escull, as it is locally known, since the year before. I tried several times but weather and skies in Nature are not easy. In fact, they are really difficult.
This day I had the help of a good friend, Miguel Cardona, who’s also an experienced paddle boarder, and good clouds in the sky.
I had condensation and drop-on-the-lens problems with a cumbersome expensive waterproof cage. That made extremely hard to use it on the paddle board, besides very heavy. So I improvised a water protection made with a plastic bag taped to the camera body. Besides I attached some plastic floaters.Only the front of the lens was exposed. It was very light, perfect for the SUP, but very risky! However if you don’t risk, you can’t win.
The plan was to get as close to L’Escull of Cabo San Antonio as possible. Miguel will hold my paddle and check my distance to the rocks. We went more or less fast. I started to take pictures but clouds weren’t dense enough in the sky and a plane trail appeared destroying the magic of the composition. I have to capture a Nature scene as pristine as possible, which is extremely hard. Just think that usually you have planes flying above you almost every time. Many clouds are in fact plane trails. So we went back to the port breakwater and I checked the visor. I realised pics weren’t good so we went again.
This time Nature was on our side!
P.D.: Do not expect to get a nice Nature picture the first day.Or the second. May be you don’t even get it the third time. You know what? Better knock on wood!