Before I jump right into this post, I have to start at the beginning. Freddie and I started shooting together in the Spring of 2016. Our first shoot was in awful lighting, and I was holding a GoPro with a central Florida thunderstorm on the horizon. After three passes, it was pouring down rain and we decided to call it a day.

We shot two more times that year, once in May when we road tripped back from the Masters together at Lake 38 in Tallahassee and once at The Boarding School in Orlando on Lake 2.
For every shoot, I've typically tried to highlight Freddie's finish coming out of buoy 2 or 4. He's got a sick turn and throws a massive wall.

For our latest shoot, I wanted to do something similar but really get close to action.
I drove up to Orlando to shoot Freddie at The Boarding School. It was an evening shoot, and lake one had the best lighting with the perfect amount of trees to filter the majority of the setting sun.
To start the shoot, I just had Freddie ski right up the rope. He was perfect all the way into 41off.
In order to get the shot above, I needed to be right inside of the buoy. To lower the risk of something going wrong, I had Freddie go back to the 35off (12m) rope length. He ran the first two passes, flawlessy. On the third pass, he came into the buoy and turned the ball like he was back at 41off. But with more length in the rope, he got in deep, really deep as you can see in the photo.

On my end, I was using my 24-70mm 2.8f Sigma lens. I was zoomed at 70mm to get as close as I possibly could to the action. We had a good amount of sunlight shooting through the tree line to create a nice filter, so I was able to lower my ISO to ensure a crisp image. My shutter speed was set at 1/1600 and my flash was at 1/4, to get rid of any strong shadows.
As soon as I was done riding through the boat wakes, I looked at my lcd screen and immediately lost my mind. I started yelling at the guys "we are done!!!"
Freddie skied down one last time and stopped right in front in front of where I was floating. We hopped in the boat and I gave him and Jimmy McClure, our boat driver, a look at what we had just captured. We all lost our minds.

To see someone get so deep out of a turn is something you can't just recreate. I've never seen an image like this one, so I'm thrilled to have been able to document this one with Freddie.
Thanks for checking out this weeks Story Behind the Shot featuring Freddie Winter.
If you like this shot, leave a "like" and comment in the section below! I love hearing from you.

Spencer Shultz • 2screative.com