Underwater Selfie

Sometimes the lousy surf, the lousy weather and lousy health all line up. Life happens.

Ages ago, my friend Lisa gave me a yellow sticky note with the words "the sun will come out tomorrow!" I still have it pinned to the refrigerator underneath some pics of World Vision kids who are doing it a million times tougher than me or anybody who has a computer or is literate.
It's a beacon of light on dark days. Thanks heaps Lis, it came in handy this week.

Below is a sandwich of an iPhone Sahara Desert dawn with a selfie underwater near Margaret River WA. It only took a cup of coffee to make, but I like the way the eyes and the palms lined up without me having to do any digital fanciness.

And yes the sun has come out again.

Constructivism

Let me say at the outset that I am not a Pearl Jam zealot. Somewhere in the 600+ CD's stacked like plastic skyscrapers in the Brinecave there are five studio and live PJ albums, which I never tire of.

Conversely, how many musicians can keep churning out albums and continue to stimulate the earbuds of us cash strapped punters? The late Zappa, maybe. Even the mighty Lou Reed, the Stones and Mr Young put out some clunkers.

With this in mind, I tentatively ventured to the local music shoppe and handed over $30 to the friendly part time musician, who recognised an old roadie in my hearing loss. What if Lightning Bolt was a dud? This is album #quite-a-few after all. But the reviewer gave it 5 out of 5.

I rationalised my expenditure by convincing myself that spending money locally is good for the local economy and keeping some young person in a job (after all somebody - presumably jobless - tried to break into my neighbours' yesterday). And let's face it, at this time of the year, you're flat out getting three cans of decent beer at the local golf club for $30. And I'm pretty sure the sonic pleasure will last longer than the hangover. At worst, I can regift it to somebody for Xmas . . .

And so we come to the packaging aRt, either a copy of the theme used by Led Zepellin last Xmas or a nod to Russian Constructivism of 100 years ago. I'm guessing the latter. Either way the artwork is the only disappointing part of Thunderbolt. There's nothing revolutionary about this album. It's great sonically, but with songs like Thunderbolt (about girl), not exactly harvesting new terrain or encouraging the proletariat to take over the Czar's riches. There' fast songs, slow songs and sections with amazing percussion and awesome guitar. Eddie would go, Eddie did go. Keeper.

Mix Tape

Mosaic

Moonset

If you saw the full moon setting this morning in our arid western skies you'd agree it was a pretty awesome experience, difficult to describe. If you didn't see it, then I can't really explain the magnetic hypnotism of a glowing heavenly blob edging towards the rim of our planet through a screen of silhouetted branches. The feeling is somewhere between a thrilling barrel and finding a green oasis after traversing a monotonous, barren lunar desert for hours.

 Have a thrilling weekend.

Monochrome (Sand)

Some more entries from my on-again-off-again iPhone diary:

I put the cameras away as the afternoon wears on. I've lost track of the number of mountain ranges we've crept over and the number of vast, desolate lunar-looking mountain plains we've crossed. This part of Morocco is stark, I mean it makes the Nullabor Plain look lush! 

This is definitely an ipod or book leg. At least we were warned and everybody seems to be hunkered down reading, listening to tunes, dozing or all of the above. The mountains are craggy, surreal, ancient. I can see why Hollywood and the Euro’s liked shooting their movies here – safe, cheap, different and light that’s a lot softer than Broken Hill or Marble Bar, even in the middle of the day. (Though we are definitely not talking summer, where it gets to 50 degrees Celsius here.)

We edge ever closer to the Sahara. The road actually gets better, possibly because here there's a strong military presence. We are warned not to photograph soldiers. We will be going close to the Algerian border. Apparently the two countries are not on the best terms.

Omar pushes the 14 seater Merc bus ever deeper into the dry, sandy heart of Morocco and we start to see date palms beside little mountain streams that eventually run dry in the desert. The camel burger is giving my ass a run for its money and my bladder is rebelling against the constant bumps. There's nothing to see to the horizon except this bare, dry Martian terrain.

Up front. Omar and Yacine are in animated discussion in Berber-Arabic. They could be arguing about the soccer, chatting about the weather or even Yacine's wedding in a few weeks. I have no idea. My question and prayers are answered when all of a sudden a bloody huge oasis at the bottom of a gorge appears out of the middle of nowhere! It's time for a stretch, a haggle and a toilet and a camera stop. I don’t think it was quite in that order though.

After 11 hours and 20 minutes on the road, we park at the edge of the dunes. Just so glad I don’t have to drive, cook or clean up on this trip. The bed feels hard but I'm asleep instantly. Knackered somewhere near Algeria, nowhere near Tibrogargan. 

Tomorrow, I’ll ride my first camel, even managing “no hands” to shoot from the beast' hum, while trekking into the amazing gargantuan dunes of the Sahara Desert to camp under a curtain of stars I don’t know and putting my life in the hands of blue robed Bedouin strangers.

And I'll definitely remember to shake my Nikes of scorpions in the morning."

Meat, mayhem and Mccas

Surfless x Zen

flat

waveless

clear

Cafe Titanic

Found a few more CF cards of Moroccan shots, so thought I would match a few with my diary notes from lunch that same day.

We pull in for lunch at a large town in the middle of of another vast plain and chow down on lamb tagine, local bread and Coke for 50 drh including tip. The open air butchery and BBQ style cooking may not inspire, but the scent of meat cooking with all sorts of spices and local herbs wins the battle. And who knows how yesterday’s camel burger was produced?

We are parked in by a family who've pulled up behind us to fix a flat tire, so I wander along the main drag grabbing some “alone time” and a few shots with the G12. I “chat” with an open-air butcher about his motorbike - he in one language and me in another. I have my Deus Ex Machina tee on and point to the bike. We smile, laugh and wave goodbye.

Along the little road the smells of cooking are replaced by fresh manure mangled with diesel fumes from poorly maintained vehicles. There’s buses and cars and trucks with animals stacked on top of crates that are stacked on top of other stuff and look like they’d topple in this wind. Folks are heading home after the big festival holiday and this little town is some sort of crossroads for commerce and communication.

Nobody’s interested in another traveller with a little camera. I’m not really into the social documentary type of photos, but can see why that crew love their little high quality Leica’s and Fuji’s. I capture a few more snaps of the friendly chaos remembering not to shove the lens in people’s faces.

Monochrome Monday (Equivalent)

These first words for the new financial year are for cyclist photogs, Steve and Robert. 

Thanks for your friendship and inspiration.

Seems that, for a botanist, Minor White (1908-1976) spent a lot of time looking at clouds. He would get his cumbersome camera out and surf the light with the disciplined eye of a Zen master. Waiting and waiting and waiting and then when the light reflected or refracted in a certain way, he would capture etherial fleetingness onto big sheets of film.

Yes, anybody who was there then with that camera could have taken that shot of that barn or those clouds. It wasn't like he had to swim around the line up dodging rogue sets, anti-imagery locals or anything.

But his photographs were not just images of stuff - frost on glass, clouds, peeling bits of paint or gnarly old rocks. No, his compositions directed the viewer's gaze towards specific elements out of all the clutter that Reality presented at that moment for him to choose from. (And yes that probably makes his photos political, but let's leave that for now.) He called them Equivalents as they caused an emotional reaction unrelated to the content.

And what did Minor White do on days when there were no clouds? 

Well, he co-founded Aperture, one of the most influential photography magazines ever, still communicating on numerous media 60 years later!

Next time you pick up a quality surf mag, (one that makes you still go "wow"), take a good, hard look at the wow shots inside and consider the way the shooter chose to frame them and consider this. The shooter or the editorial designer was probably inspired by the great photographers such as Minor White or taught or mentored by those that were - shooters who knew a cloud was not just a cloud.

Walls mountains wipeouts

Too Old to Rocknroll

More than a thousand suns have grazed my eyes and scorched my skin since my first day at school, a holy picture in my top pocket to protect me and sox that didn't match. I have forsaken the gut blasting pain of pre-rashie-era styrofoam short boards for a plethora of fins, foils and rockers. 

This weekend sees a group of ageing grommets assemble for the annual winter Wrecks and Relics gathering (dare I say "contest"). These are the crew who were there (probably don't remember) when single fins became twin fins and thrusters morphed into longboards more suitable for a gentlemanly (dare I say "middle-aged") approach to sliding the brine.

So if you see a bunch of leathery old buggers down near the Noosa Rivermouth laughing at each other, lugging around old Joe Larkins and Woosley's, know that they have seen it and done it all and that you can still surf after 60!

The Great Curve

"Sometimes the world has a load of questions 

Seems like the world knows nothing at all 

The world is near but it's out of reach 

Some people touch it...but they can't hold on."

from The Great Curve by Talking Heads