Time to get outdoorslike

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.

Missing Moffs Moments 2

HUGE APOLOGIES to my regular readers and Moffatts mates wondering where their photos got to. (Email me at: brinetimes@gmail.com )

Within an hour of downloading 1000+ shots of Moffatt the other morning, my laptop emitted a burnt wiring odour and decided to retire after 7 or 10 years of loyal service, which is like 100 human years.
I'm not sure how long it's been, but it was the white Macbook 13".
We went everywhere.
Governments came and went.
Despots fell.
Heros died.

The little white lappie just kept on digesting all manner of images - shots of weddings on the beach at Noosa, Maldivian moments, Morocco, WA, the NSW Central Coast and a trillion old analogue film scans from last century.

Thank you little white darkroom-in-a-box.

Most Heroes Are Anonymous

 "Most Heroes Are Anonymous" the shoe slogan read, back in the day when I actually ran (as opposed to this morning's uncoordinated puffing shuffle).
Clever. Had me hooked. Still like it.
As a concept anyway, but not as a sneaky advertising gimmick designed to vacuum more debt out of one's "credit" card.

In the greater scheme of things, most of us would be lucky to know a couple of hundred other souls traversing Life.
To the rest of the planet, we are anonymous. Randoms. Faceless. Without a story.

But heroes no less to those we care for, to those we inspire, to those we love.
And that's enough.

Airbrush

Bring back the aesthetic wonder of airbrushed aRtwork on surfboards, I say.

Beneath the eyelids

Monochrome Monday (excuses)

Excuses.

We can all dig up a million of them.

Surf's too flat.

Too crowded.

Too choppy.

Too sharky.

Too hungover / ripped/ unfit.

And doing nothing gets easier.
And easier.
Until watching others becomes the norm.

Was a bit like that yesterday.

Bit shabby.

But we both made a BIG effort.

Got out and about.

Ended up shooting some keepers.

Eating some great food.

And running into old fiends.

Stoked.

Song without a name

Body surf

Surf board

or

air matt

 

 Have a great weekend in your loggerhood.

Neologism

I'm no linguistics guru, but I know a good neologism (aka homemade word or phrase) when I invent one.
The Loggerhood.
You read it here first.
No, it's not copyrighted, so feel free to repeat it in conversations post surf until it laps the world and I hear a stranger using it someday.

The Loggerhood is my freshly minted term to:
1 describe the great community of surfers of logs
2 describe the geographical hangout for said surfers and
3 also be used as a G rated  exclamation of shock eg like when I almost stepped on a venomous red bellied black snake last night while jogging. I could have said "what the logger hood!!!!".
I hadn't invented the term at that point so I cursed in a most politically-incorrect manner.
I also cursed the ungrateful cyclists coming towards me on that concrete path with their 30000000 kilowatt retina-destroying headlamps who not only didn't say "thanks" when I alerted them to another snake (taipan maybe) seen earlier further along the path, but failed to warn me of that pretty, yet venomous reptilian ahead of me. That's not how one behaves in The Loggerhood.

Today's relatively inane post is for polite, erudite surfers everywhere - one's like Phil, my Maldivian shipmate (above and below) and Bec who's part of the younger loggerhood that will drop in, turn off and tune in at Byron Surf Festival this weekend, where all manner of neologists, musicologists, surfologists, sociologists, scientists and scenesters will converge.
I hope somebody gawps "what the logger hood?".

Monochrome Monday (maiden voyage)

 Around the time of the first moon landing, a guy called Russell Morris sang on our little mono transistor radio about The Real Thing. Being a little kid, I had no idea what it was about, but still thought it was brilliant:

“There’s a meaning there,

 but the meaning there

doesn’t really mean a thing

Come and see the real thing,

come and see the real thing,

come and see

I am the real thing!”

The Real Thing written by Johnny Young 1969

 My oldest brother had already left home and hitch hiked across Australia a couple of times and was about to enter the life-and-death lottery that was potential conscription to a war in Vietnam. He had cut down a Malibu board and reglassed it under our old wooden house and regaled us with stories of this surf place Up North.

 Somehow he convinced our folks into taking all eight of us there. It would be our last holiday together as an entire family. But it would be the start of my infatuation with surfing, cameras and a certain national park.

I once thought that I’d get to an age where I would lose interest in surfing and photography, but I was wrong. These days, I use whatever suits the conditions – quad or log, digital or film, I don’t care so long as I’m wet and stoked. 

Extract (Bus)

Some half thought out, quickly scribbled diary notes from this week's travels and travails. Have a bus-free weekend. (Unless your "bus" is a kombi)

"This is not my bus. 
No mine is missing in action, a phantom on some mythical schedule where transportation runs on time.
The electronic notice board said mine was 29 minutes away - enough time for me to almost walk home.
So I hop the first bus that comes along that will drop me near my home."

"But the passengers on this Other Bus are a different demographic from way out on the perimeter of the city where young people still get Southern Cross tattoos and sport Bad Girl and We're Full stickers on their cars with pride .

No this is not my normal ride, where everybody vaguely knows each others faces but doesn't talk, preferring to stay immersed in mobile phone apps. Or in my case mobile mantras.

No this is not my bus alright. It's more like some surrealistic Dylan ballad where cowboys, tarot readers and gypsy women mingle in the shared goal of Getting Home."

"The highlight was seeing something I've never seen in all my years of travelling here or overseas - a young bearded bloke making origami sculptures, oblivious to the eclectic mix of passengers swaying as the bus hits its stride. Origami is definitely a handy skill for a twenty something in today's depressed job market. One must have a point of differentiation ."

Write Your Story

First up, apologies to my regular visitors. I've been haunted by a few demons from the past this week and been off my game.
But I'm back.

Friday, the gateway to the weekend.
With so many "definitive" histories of surf out there, it's time we all wrote our own stories.
Just because ours' didn't feature a camera crew and competitive surf stars, doesn't mean they didn't happen.
Doesn't mean they're somehow a less valid component in our shared surfing lore.

And if you haven't got a story yet, then the weekend provides the platform for what might be considered EPIC in years to come.
Share the stoke.