The Dogs of San Francisco

I spent Saturday at the WORLD DOG SURFING CHAMPIONSHIPS, which are just 20 miles, also known as a two hour drive and then a twenty minute walk, away from my apartment. It turns out that they were insanely popular and there was a five mile traffic jam on the Pacific Coast Highway to get there, and no parking within a mile of the beach. It started at 9:00 AM. I left at 9:15 AM. I got there at 11:30 AM. It was supposed to end at noon. (Fortunately it didn’t.)

Still totally worth it.

The last time I went, it was 2016, and there were about one tenth the number of people there. And I didn’t get ANY good pictures of surfing dogs, because at the time I didn’t have a good long lens. Well, since then, I acquired a 100-500mm Sigma Canon-mount lens, and then a Sony camera body and an adaptor for said lens. So now I can take pretty fair portraits from around half a football-field away.

It was damn tough to find a spot where there weren’t a half-dozen heads in the way, but I did manage to get, oh, a few pretty good shots. I’ll be posting them here over the next week or two.

I really need to find a page with all the contestants’ pictures so I can put names to the noses.