Monochrome Monday (Spray)

On Any Morning

While you and I

are slapping on

the sunscreen and the hat,

this guy is silvering up

to earn a quid

by staying still.

The Pocket

Found $9 which had been rattling around the pocket of my boar dies for the last nine surfs!
Epic, including a slide with Huon and his Bing Elevator in fairly ordinary surf this morning - but fun nonetheless.

Noosa Part 2

Same same

Bottom turn.
Same move.
Same town.
Same same?

South

dawn departure

for a run South

to surf with some

old mates.

Grain

Gertrude Stein vs Neil Young

I don't set out to procrastinate or get distracted.

It just happens along the way.

For example, I'm cleaning up my desk. There's a pile of official documents, computer hard drive cables, business cards, shirt buttons (??), a funny note from my staff and other scraps of paper with stuff written on them - ideas from friends on where to buy silk for surfboard fabric underlays, repeat medication slips from the doctor, financial statements and then I spy a post it note with just this written on it "mexsgarage.com.au".

I have no recollection how that came into my possession, so I fire up the computer to investigate it via Google.
It's some sort of automobile website for a crew who do impressive classic olde cars makeovers.

I stare at the post it note again. Is it even my scratchy handwriting?
I decide not and turf it.

While the web is up, I check my email and there's something from one of those online travel agents promising bargain prices. Maybe I can afford that return trip to WA and catch up with Corey at Margaret River, I ponder.
So I send him a text to find out when he's flying out of that mining site in the middle of the desert - the one where he gets paid to blow stuff up and shoot critters like this.

In my distraction, I have let the water for the morning coffee boil and gone cool. I start to reboil it. The water here is suss in summer anyway.

While that's happening, I spot an interesting email from Byron Bay, the epicentre of the surfing rainbow. Ohhhh look at that! Jim Banks has a sale on and the photos of his new Indo board range have me dreaming of exotic locales.
Meanwhile,  the water for the coffee has boiled and cooled again.
I have lost an hour I'll never get back.

The photo below sums up my shifting focus and distraction perfectly.
I bought some beautiful little roses at the markets, thinking I'll do a macro Tina Modotti style shot. I got distracted too many times and now the blooms have gone belly up. Since we are having a heat wave I end up getting some nice shots of rosarian decay.

This is what they should have looked like.

"A rose is a rose is a rose" - Gertrude Stein

I'll probably get distracted and go off on an artistic tangent all the same again in 2014.

It's not all bad, though.

Sometimes artistic deviation can lead to interesting results. As the great sage Young once remarked when commenting on his various stylistic changes away from Mainstream Music:

"Travelling there was really boring 

so I headed for the ditch. 

It was a rough ride 

but I met more interesting people there." 

- Neil Young

Bungalow Bill

Bungalow Bill Stewart from Woosleys surfboards swinging it round the summer traffic.

Aloha Nikonos

If I count my phone, I have nine working cameras and one car to chuck them all into. 

My absolute toughest, go anywhere, quasi indestructible little light trapper is my second oldest camera, the hard working 35 mm Nikonos V which is 30 next year. 

It's taken a lot of beatings in the impact zone and never botched one exposure. While I've tumbled across the bottom of Granite Bay screaming quietly for a breath of air, not a drop of moisture has gotten inside.

This pic courtesy of Wikipedi

So I figure it deserves a little holiday over in WA with Margaret River surfer big Corey from the TooMuchFunCollective. Aloha little orange marvel and BIG thanks.

Merry Christmas Down Under

Merry Christmas followers, lurkers and accidental visitors.
Hope you all had an amazing Yew-l-tide venerating the deity of your choice.

Today I'll be honouring my late Dad's passion for sailing by watching the start of the annual Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

Hoist the spinnaker in the heavens cobber.

Shrimps on the BBQ

I'm off to see a man about some prawns (shrimps) 

for tomorrow's Christmas lunch, 

so this is a quick post-modern post 

with a mashup  of some new 

and some old imagery 

- all taken with the Canon 7D.

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.