Monochrome Monday (birthday)

Extremely large shout out to my best mate who has a certain birthday today.
So many good times together over the decades.

Let's keep surfing until we can't remember each other's names!
Your bithday card looks something like this Leunig Cartoon:

James and Paul

Monochrome Monday (a wall is not a door)

"Dont spend time beating on a wall

hoping to transform it into a door"

Coco Chanel

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.

Quote - Week 3

"Life goes on"

Robert Frost

Sub-optimal

We've been talking a lot lately about why our friends gave surfing away and let their boards gather dust. 

Some got into other scenes. Some pursued careers far from the brine. Some were seduced by their demons, never to return.

We've also been talking a lot lately about why we keep surfing. 

Even in dribbly conditions, after searching for an hour along scoured sandbanks. And we keep coming back to the social aspect of surfing a quiet spot with a couple of pals.

Doesn't matter whether they are riding one fin, no fin or three finned mals. It's the social aspect of sharing the brine under a big blue sky with people dear to us.

A big feed, a coffee or three afterwards and talking story is the icing on the cake.

Here's one for everybody who still goes out even when it's sub-optimal.

Remembering Megan

"What's so incredibly amusing with photography

is that while seemingly an art of the surface, 

it catches things I haven't even noticed."

Jacques Henri Latrigue

Today's post is dedicated to my wonderful niece, Megan. That's her above, snapped last century, when things were more carefree.. While I wander around Byron looking for waves today, she'll be doing what she did yesterday and the day before - caring for her terminally ill husband. 

Life makes no sense, sometimes.

Sunday Drive

Game Changer

The photo above was taken with a Nikonos 35mm film camera.

A lot of people get excited about film.

But not me.

It costs money and time waiting to see if you got the shot. And the camera above is manual focusing, manual film wind on.

Film does have it's time and places, depending on the light, the emulsion (affordable digital still can't replicate infra red mono film for my money) and the intended final use. 

I still use four film cameras including a 1936 6x6 and a 1980s Nikonos with two different lenses to shoot out in the water with. However, I mainly shoot water surf using a bulky DSLR in a robust professional housing.

But today, one can now buy a digital version of the legendary underwater Nikonos, complete with interchangeable lenses, small size, large resolution and 10+ frames per second. It's a game changer.

Underwater

Amazing  series of tropical thunderstorms last night, started with this one which seemed to chase my bus home. Looking up I was reminded of the view of boiling foam when you dive under a set wave.

 

Monochrome Monday (onshore)

Monochrome Monday (scorcher)

My Dad was born in Summer but loved Winter.
My Mum was born in Summer and loves Summer.
My Mum actually gets excited about the approaching hot season.
She will happily sit in the sun without a hat or sunglasses, weeding her garden.

I've never seen her wear sunscreen.
And though she lives at the beach, she's never had a skin cancer to zap or cut out and wait for that best word in the English language - "benign".

She'll be calling today "glorious" while the media will use words like "scorcher" and most folk hunker down under the melodic thrum of their air conditioners muttering about "global warming"or"bloody northerlies".

I don't understand the weather.
I mean I know it's hot because the wind is from the north and I know the surf is lousy because the wind is from the north.
But. its early Spring.
The magpies are attacking pedestrians and cyclists with egalitarian gusto.
The jacaranda trees are flaming purple.
The air is redolent of blooms.
It's not Summer for another 50+ days.

Dean Brady at his local Point

And yet it's going to be something like 35 degrees Celsius of 95 degrees Fahrenheit, where I'm sitting, wearing a fleecy vest three hours after dawn. 

Glorious.

Bush spring

bushfires 

and 

back burning

cold wax

to

warm wax

clear moons

surf checks

onshores

spring