Here is another portrait from my archives. This one is of Chava, a local surfer. Usually, I like my subjects to look into the camera because I feel like it is a bit more personal and more likely to connect the viewer with the subject. Perhaps it is because of the extreme closeup nature of the shot, but Chava’s off-camera stare still seems to invite the viewer into his personal space.
Click on the full-screen button in the upper-right corner of the image below for the best viewing experience!
One of the biggest drawbacks to viewing photographs online is the loss of detail. Even when photos are shown fullscreen, much of the detail that is captured by the camera is lost due to the resizing of the images for web viewing. The image degradation is especially great when the image happens to come from a medium or large format image.
Luckily, there is a service called Closr.it that helps to bring more of that detail to the web. While the images may not be viewable for iPhone and iPad users due to Closr’s reliance on Flash, most desktop and laptop users will be able to experience many photos almost as if they were standing right in front of a very large print.
In a previous post, I had posted a 580 by 580 pixel image of one of my surfer friends, Bob W. Here is the same image viewed through the Closr widget. Much like a YouTube video, the Closr image can be viewed in fullscreen mode. Try zooming into the eyes to see the level of detail captured in the original image.
There wasn’t much in the way of waves this morning at El Porto. At least not enough to try any water shots so I settled for snapping a few shots from the beach and then caught a few waves on my longboard.
Waves are supposed to pick up this evening and stay big over the weekend, but we’re also supposed to get some rain so who knows what the conditions will be like. Hopefully, I’ll be able to try my hand at the water shots again tomorrow.
My old site had a bunch of portraits that I had taken of some of the surfers that call El Porto their home break. I removed that old gallery of images when I went to this blog format for the site and figured that I would slowly begin adding the portraits back while mixing in some other images from my archives.
These are all portraits that I had taken several years ago using my Hasselblad and the standard 80mm lens with Ilford Delta 100 film. Charley and Rick are still out at El Porto on a regular basis. Ted Robinson moved to Orange County a few years back and we don’t get to see him out in the lineup very much unfortunately.
