Visiting Morro Bay on the central California coast, I found it was possible, by shooting from the Morro Rock parking lot, to get pretty close to the surfers at the break. This was a winter day of pretty big waves but manageable, and it drew a lot of surfers. The following day, the waves were so big that no one was standing up in them -- a Pacific Ocean monster day, when they actually ran the Mavericks competition 200 miles to the north.

Note: these were all post-processed on my laptop while traveling.