Quote

" The salt in our blood

matches the ocean's salinity."

JFK

Monochrome Monday (lite)

Same same

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

Monochrome Monday (King Tide)

Midday at the Oasis

The Day started out innocently enough. I was dusty and sleep deprived from a BIG night. 

The dawn check revealed a nice new swell had arrived with the faintest of offshore breezes. 

A quick text or three to the tribe, followed by strong coffee and I'm on it, floating around the rock shelves of The Point on the multi-coloured Seasurf Seahorse log below. It was not the right board for that day, but the only other one I had on me was the red 6 foot quad. Ohh how I would discover the folly of bad equipment choice.

It was one of those rare swells where the wind hung offshore most of the day and there were plenty of waves to go around. Everybody was buzzing that the next day was going to be even bigger. So I stayed out way longer than I should have like an addict getting way too much of a good thing. Telling myself that I would shoot instead of surfing the next day when The Swell would peak.

Even when I was exhausted beyond what my body thought possible, I stayed out, telling it that we would rest the next day. Just a few more. Too much fun is never enough.

Unless you have a bad wipeout.

Like a really really bad wipeout, where you are flung in front of a 6 foot wall of whitewater and as you hit the surface on the way down, in a most inelegant manner, the air is punched out of your lungs and The Rogue Set cartwheels you dismissively across the big rock shelf like a baby seal being tossed around by a killer whale.

And that's what happened.

But that's the easy part.

When that stopped I could not get to the surface because I was wrapped in four foot of boiling foam and instead of swimming to the surface, I'm clawing at foam that has insufficient density to get me to the top. I can't touch the bottom to launch myself upwards.

And I start to think I may not make it. And instead of looking back on my life and all that, all I can think in disbelief and shock is "this can't be happening".

Somehow that extra blubber I'm carrying finally earns it's keep and I slowly rise to the sweetest sensation on earth.
Fresh air.

To whomever was watching over me on Tuesday December 3, 2013 thank you.

Here's Johnny

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.

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.

Aka Summer Solstice

Longest day and shortest night of the year.
Summer has peaked.

Something Borrowed

Continuing the bridal theme - "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" 

Today I'm borrowing a few old film shots from my first blog, Brine Time (all 793 posts are still able to be viewed).

GfG at Granite riding the ancient Joe Larkin pig mal with no leggie. It was old even in 1984 and weighed a ton - an epic to carry around all of those points. Didn’t used to see many mals in those days. A couple of guys from the Alex Headland crew, but that was it. The Larkin is awaiting restoration.

GfG at Granite. Probably same session as the other shot. We’d backpack around to the outcrop overlooking the furtherst cove. Surf. Shoot. Come in and scoff down a Mars Bar and a Coke and go out again, eventually returning for a massive pancake and maple syrup lunch and game of Space Invaders (20cents in the slot machine) at the little shop at the entrance to the National Park called The Noosa Wave.

The second shot above is one of the ones that accompanied a story I wrote about Noosa that was published in the Switchfoot II book.

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.

Grey Zone

6" x 6" x Summer

Monochrome Monday (is back)