This one comes from the group shoot last month with the San Diego DSLR club. Right next to the famous Belmont Park amusement park in Mission Beach is the Wave House—an outdoor bar that includes two huge wave pools for boogey boarding and surfing. My friends, Shawn and Andy, pointed it out to me, and I immediately busted out my telephoto lens and took a position near the edge of one of the pools. Many of the people that went in were obviously beginners, which made for some amusing wipeouts, but one or two knew what they were doing. This guy was one of the latter.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 55-200mm VR DX lens, in aperture priority mode. Focal length 150mm, aperture f/5.6, shutter 1/125 sec, ISO 900. Post-processing in Aperture 3: pushed exposure to the max and added a strong curve to drop the shadows and midtones while maintaining the highlights. (It looks like there is some vignetting, but the darkness you see around the edges has more to do with the way the artificial lights were actually striking the wave area.)

Thoughts for improvement: I actually like this shot quite a bit. The only reason I didn't pick it the first time around is because although it's a pretty good action shot, it doesn't really speak to me much in terms of atmosphere or storytelling. Technically speaking, this would probably have been much better if I had a fast telephoto lens and a camera with better high-ISO performance, that way I could have operated with a much faster shutter speed and captured the water with less blur and grain. Working within the limitations of my gear as it is, though, I think this is pretty good. Possibly a different crop would be better.