the other Bowie

Bowie Pollard sneaking in a cheater 5 at Little Cove

Noosa Part 2

Crazed, Dazed but Unphased

The points are going to be very busy this weekend. 

Get some. Share some.

And for the rest of us amateurs, have some respect and wear a legrope. Nobody thinks you're cool swimming after your log as it bashes its way shorewards when you fall off the nose after that hang 10 in the barrel.

Song for Dora

Harrison Roach x First Point

Word on the coconut telegraph is that The Who (or what's left of them) might be coming to our barren island this year.

It's part of what they are calling, the Last Tour Ever.

They'll keep making albums, but the logistics and physical toll of touring are now too much for a bunch of old geezers from Shepherd's Bush, London.

I for one, will be trying to get tix.

"I can go anyway, way I choose

I can live anyhow, win or lose

I can go anywhere, for something new

Anyway, anyhow, anywhere I choose"

"Nothing gets in my way

Not even locked doors

Don't follow the lines

That been laid before

I get along anyway I dare

Anyway, anyhow, anywhere"

from Anyway Anyhow Anywhere by The Who

The Red M&M

My surfing buds reckon I resemble a big M&M when I'm floating in the lineup with my red Gath helmet on. No idea why.

BIG shout out to my friend Laura, who captured some high angle land shots while I was out shooting in the water recently. Her shots provide an interesting juxtaposition to mine - even though we were shooting the same thing.

And they seem to confirm the M&M theory. Thanks buddy.

Something Old

This week's theme (as endorsed by brides around the world): 

Something old, 

something new, 

something borrowed. 

something blue 

Today's contingent consists of 35mm films scans from last century ie OLD.

 California dreaming. Huntington Beach Pier, January 1978. Handheld. Manual focus. 200mm. Kodachrome 64. This guy was getting barrelled and hanging five and having grown up with short boards, I had never seen anything like it - nobody was riding longboards anymore on the Sunny Coast.

Mooloolaba Rivermoth. Sunset late 1980's. These pilot boats had twin Rolls Royce engines and were quite a sight heading out when there were large swells. Somehow they would pull up beside a monstrous tanker and the "pilot" would scamper up a ladder and then guide the newcomer into Moreton Bay and the Port of Brisbane.

Hand held slow exposure with a Metz strobe that still works fine today. This was our local evening stroll on a sunday evening, when we lived about a kilometre south. A couple of times the rivermouth silted up and you could surf from Point Cartwright down the river, whilst avoiding boats.

Kings Beach, late arvo. Nikonos V 35mm Kodachrome. This was the camera I used to shoot from the water with and must have had a frame or two left on the 36 exposure roll. I quite like 35mm focal length on a 35mm camera -  little wider than normal but not too distorted.

I was never much good at street photography, but quite like this one. Of course the Kiosk is long demolished and replaced with some sort of bland structure.

Losing One's Marbles is Optional

I've known my best mate since he moved into our street when we were both nine years old. Unlike me, he's a goofy footer. I have archives of classic shots of him and although this old shot is not him, it reminds me of the wave of the trip my mate scored in the Maldives. As I'm paddling back out at Sultans, I get caught inside as he comes screaming across the reef at high speed on his bright orange Southcoast longboard. 

The sight of him way above me as I duck dive is etched deep in the memory bank. We rate our surf sessions in marbles, as in "that was a two marble surf".  If you don't surf enough, you'll lose your marbles (go crazy). I'm pretty sure that Sultans session was a three or four marble surf.

For some reason, foggy mornings like today remind me of an epic day when my best mate and I were teenagers editing our sociology video assignment at university. We thought our "mockumentary" parody of Academia was pretty awesome after one whole day of editing. The lecturer, a famous person from The Film Industry, deemed it "unfit for human consumption". We took that as a compliment.

Happy holidays, buddy and get some marbles back in the barrel.

Looking Back

I've just spent the last hour before this wintery dawn listening to various versions of the Rolling Stones song Gimme Shelter, which is my favourite song of all time. Yep OF ALL TIME.

OK, I actually do listen to new stuff to find something better. Music is a BIG part of my experience of this bizarre phenomenon called LIFE.
But right now, that old nugget from 44 years ago is The One in my biased opinion. There's live versions by the Stones and all manner of guest vocalists from  Lady Gaga and Fergie to the awesome Lisa Fischer, but they are no match for Merry Clayton the original backup singer.

This was a tune of it's era - more Altamont than Woodstock, as The Singer once said:

"Well, it's a very rough, very violent era, 

Violence on the screens, pillage and burning. 

And Vietnam was not war as we knew it in the conventional sense..." 

"That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. 

It's apocalypse; the whole record's like that."

^{Mick Jagger}

Finally, there's a new documentary that shines a light on the critical role back up singers play and making a tune into something huge. They never got much recognition or cash, but they were the glassers who tied the whole package together.Gimme Shelter is a wonderfully crafted tune - a great riff, evocative lyrics but it's the back-up singer that makes it. Sorry boys.

Monochrome Monday

Magic light

This is a cropped tweaked scanned and recycled 35mm Nikonos film shot I took of Japanese surfer Tehru(?) three winters back. I've used it before but am not up for much today so feel some magic winter light is required.

This one's for the Wilkies. Hang tight.

Monochrome Monday (Hands)

Falling down the mountain

Monochrome Monday (filmless Atlas)

 I still use a number of film cameras on occasion - usually when the light is perfect or I need large format in the studio, but for the rest of the time, I heart digital and my darkroom-in-a-box.