Mwave 2010

By Leif Anderson - December 19, 2010

The famous M wave, located near Montrose Colorado, is probably one of the best waves in the world. Perhaps not the absolute best, but definitely in the running for the top ten. Considering the fact that it's located in the middle of the desert and runs consistently well into october, it could be the worst wave in the world and it would probably still be one of my favorite spots. Montrose is only about 7 hours from Fort Collins, so I consider the Mwave sort of like my backyard spot. Natalie and I get out there as often as we can during the late season. The wave is shallow, scary-fast, and cold, but it can serve up some huge air. Here are our best photos from this season. Natalie especially had some big breakthroughs this year.

Last year, we would post every week or two, with whatever photos we had taken lately. Consequentially, some of our real great shots would get buried in a flood of "merely awesome" photos. This year, we decided to wait until the season had ended, and put together one post with just the best photos. However, as soon as I started selecting and editing photos, I realized how huge of a task this could become. Eventually, here in mid december, I have decided to just freaking post them. I could keep agonizing for another full year. I don't think that I'll ever really feel like the photos are truly perfect.

Here's one example of the tortuous editing process.

"Your head is a-squished" M Wave 2010

This is the final version that I posted, but let me step you through some of the thought that went into it. First, of course, I tuned the colors to carefully transform Chrispy's bright green boat to a mottled purple, because I thought that would look better. Then I used the clone tool to move him down a little closer to the water, so that it would look like I get more air than he does. Then the real questions started. First of all, title. Should it be "your head is squished," or "squish squish" or maybe no title at all? In the end, I went with "your head is a-squished" to try to capture the spirit of the squishing. I also considered adding a word bubble, but I just couldn't figure out which direction to have the little arrow point for the words. Then I noticed that some of the grass over on the far bank had gotten trampled, and considered going back to re-shoot the whole thing. You can imagine how long it took to go through the thousand or so original photos that we had.

Anyway, here are a couple other really notable photos. There is a slideshow at the bottom of the page, which has a handful of photos of Chrispy with no shirt on (for all the ladies out there). It's sort of like an internet dating thing, except Chrispy didn't sign up for it, he asked us not to post it (but make no mistake ladies, he is single... for now). I am really proud of the photos we selected for the slideshow.