Using an 8×10 Deardorff large format camera, Sternbach focuses on in situ portraits of surfers.
Sternbach's photographs are particularly notable for highlighting women surfers and surf culture,[1][2] and for her ethnographic rather than action approach.
In a National Geographic profile, Sternbach describes her relation to using early photographic processes as deploying a medium in need of an appropriate subject matter, one that she gradually found surfers to fulfill quite by accident:[6] "Once I understood the limitations of the process, I realized that it was more of a question of finding a subject matter to suit the medium, not the other way around.
[9][10] Photographs in Sternbach's 2009 book Surfland are described by The New York Times as "a kind of ethnographic study in stillness, silvery portraits of a tribe united by a sense of adventure, the love of a sport and a connection to the ocean.
"[11] Sternbach's "16.02.20 #1 Thea+Maxwell" from the series Surfland was awarded second place in the 2016 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.