Barefoot Water Skier

I took this photograph of a barefoot waterskier while standing in chest-deep water. I've used this technique for the photo shoots of boats and had wanted to try it with the water skiers. This has to be carefully planned with both the driver and the skier. We placed a buoy in the water to be the guide for the driver. I placed myself far enough away so as not to be hosed by the spray as the boat passed. The goal was to have the barefooter head directly toward me and let go of the rope at the last minute, which we determined would be when the boat passed me, giving him 75 feet to stop. The plan was fine except I was positioned slightly too wide and the footer could not get out to the side any more than shown here. The image looks good here and I wanted to get a shot that included the boat. As the skier got closer I switched to the vertical orientation. I'll show this image in the next posting.

This was shot with a 100-400 lens at 400mm, 1/1600 second at f/5.6, ISO 250, manual.