Beginnings

My interest in photography began in high school. The photo below is one of the very first photographs that I shot and developed myself (as if you couldn’t tell it wasn’t professional work). As you can see the paper is water stained, but I guess it fits with the subject matter.

Sea Isle City, NJ by Ryan Wentzel

The photo was taken in the fall of 1996 in Sea Isle City, New Jersey. I was the only person on the beach and the only one who surfed that day. Several weeks later the water was simply too cold for me to continue surfing so this was one of my last surf sessions on the east coast (I moved back to southern California after the school year). This photo has a nostalgic feel to it and brings back fond memories of the surprisingly good waves I surfed in New Jersey in the fall of 1996.