As I return from Indo from shooting salt water for nearly 23 days straight, Hurricane Irene turns 120 miles from my landing strip at Miami Airport. The second we land Matt Oberman and I turn back into surf mode, from zombie mode = 37 hours of traveling. Making calls and narrowing in where to go since we still had 4 hours of daylight remaining and I had the most amazing girlfriend ever picking us up ready to chase it upcoast. For the next two days I was on it nonstop shooting it from Fort Lauderdale to Palm beach. Swimming with my housing, shooting from land and trying to somehow shake off some serious jet lag. By Friday afternoon the lack of rest had caught up and had to get some red bull in me before the last swim of the day out at Reef Road. Tanner Strohmenger, Cheyne Cottrell and I had chased it all day and ended up scoring some surf but not without the influx of jellyfish consuming every itchable part of our bodies. With the rise of the sun on Saturday much of South Florida discovered that Irene was still bearing gifts and Palm Beach was nearly the same size. So it was on again, but I would stay south where the swell had reached some pretty rare spots in South Palm Beach County along with Broward County. As I knew all the coverage was being focused on Palm Beach and Northward along the East coast of the US, no one was shooting down south. Putting eggs into that basket paid off on Saturday when we got the shots. You can see some of them on Surfline.com and ESPN.com, while more will come in print later. Next up Katia….
Ben Hicks
Boca Raton Photography & Design
www.bocaratonphoto.com
