Morning Swims

The ocean off 79th Street has been calm the last few mornings. Lara have I been swimming either early or late in the day. We swim from one marker-buoy 100 meters off shore, down a few blocks to the next marker-buoy and then back again. The swim takes us along the outside edge of the sandbar and is rarely more than 8 feet deep. Most of the time I can just see rippled sand through my crappy goggles. I doubt that the distance we swim is more than a mile, but it is far enough, both in length and distance offshore, to make me feel like I am doing something.

If we swim our course in the evening, I usually take the morning to shoot some photos of Lara swimming. I just received my new AquaTech housing from Australia and I am eager to work the kinks out before next weeks' Vancouver trip. The system I bought includes a housing for my Canon 1Ds MKII, a dome for the 20mm, a flat port for my 24-70mm, and a housing for the 580 EXII strobe. I bought this splash housing thinking that it would be light and highly swimmable, but there is no getting around the fact that the 1Ds MKII is a big heavy camera. It is a good workout to push the housing and flash through the water and keep up with Lara. But the results have been really encouraging. Second curtain sync on the flash and a lucky hit of light off the mirrored goggles, and you really have an open water swim image. And the following can't be overstated. it is so nice to have a model who gets out of bed at 6:20, dives into 77 degree water and swims in the direction I point. And with only a little grumpiness!