North East Sport Photographer | FlowRider Pro Am finals in Redcar

Clearing the snow off my car to drive through the snow and cover a national surfing competition recently felt slightly odd, but as a North East freelance photographer every day brings variety, from corporate portraiture in a boardroom to exciting outdoor events.

 The occasion this time was the FlowRider Pro/Am finals at the Redcar & Cleveland Leisure and Community Heart, which saw competitors from across the country descend on the town. Heart offers a variety of ways to stay active, with a state of the art gym, a multi-use sports hall, group exercise classes, Flowrider, swimming pool and water confidence pool.

The two-day event saw flowboard and bodyboard riders put their colourful boards through their tricks, with 12 young riders competing on Saturday, and eight amateur adults plus seven professionals battling for top spot on the Sunday.

If you’ve never seen wave riding, you’re missing a treat. It’s a tough physical challenge involving breathtaking moves that take hours of practice to perfect. Surfers come down the waves pretty quickly so as a sport photographer my challenge was to keep up with the action as it happened. There is nothing worse than being slightly behind a shot and missing what would have been a perfect photographic moment.

I was so busy concentrating and looking for the shot that I forgot to look out for the water, and managed to get completely soaked at one point when a wave came over, to the amusement of the spectators. Fortunately the camera I was using is waterproof, so I carried on taking shots like a trooper, albeit a bit soggily.

I love photographing water and experimenting with slow and fast shutter speeds for different effects. A slower speed gives effect such as a trail of water, while a fast speed picks up the people action in sharp definition. It’s not possible yet, but I’m sure one day technology will move on so photographers can capture both effects in a single shot.

As well as shot of the action I mixed in some of the spectators and the facilities, including some of people taking their own photos on iPads and phones, to add variety.

Half a dozen students from Teesside University were also busy filming the event, using GoPro hand held cameras. Some of the surfers also took real action shots using selfie sticks – surfing and filming took some real skill and was amazing to see. 

I was pleased to see my photos used for PR and publicity purposes, and widely distributed across the North East media and across social media channels.

A summer-themed event held in winter, this competition was a great chance to get more people interested in the sport and and there is talk of it becoming a twice-yearly event, which would be a great chance to put Redcar Heart on the map.