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Surfing is for Everybody

William Orbit gets it. Click on this link if you want a soundtrack for this blog Had a gal come by yesterday who was working on a College thesis at Syracuse, and had asked if she could interview me about the changes that I had seen on the coast in my lifetime. Wound up talking about how, in spite of the ocean doing pretty well, (My homestretch of coast used to be littered with innumerable oil piers which were dark, pitch stained fingers, laying across the bright blue of surf lineups. They are all pretty much gone now. Removed.) that

Sliding into 2011: Year in Pictures

Golden Reflections This link is to a new piece by Zuri Star called Keep Holding on. It fits the New Year quite well. It seems that all around us this past year there was friction. In fact, I found myself enmeshed in three massive battles, all at the same time. I did not author those. I simply said “no” to three entities I saw as abusive of my fellow man, community and Ocean Environment. friction |ˈfrik sh ən| noun the resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another : a lubrication system that reduces friction. • the

Golden

It is always the scarcity of a thing which imparts value in the perception of a viewing public, so artists tend to withold showing too much of their hand at once. I remember a photographer with whom I worked years ago, who would hoard his work, and release it one image at a time over the period of his career. His fame and fortune wound up being centered on approximately 9 great images. I do not think he saw the time we are in coming, where with new tech, and refined approaches, a higher bar for acquisition and communication than

ID Please

In marketing, one of the principal rules, is to identify the product in the eyes of the market. I am often introduced as a surf photographer. It is not that I eschew the title, which truly makes me die inside at the proffering of that description. Someone inevitably must endeavor to communicate what indeed it is, that one shoots. I do shoot surfing. I love the ocean. Surfing professionally was something that I was proud to have done for a substantial portion of my life, as it kept me IN the sea daily. But that is not what I am.

Modus: Light and Water

“How many shots did it take to acquire this one?” It is a good question. I hear it a lot. Here is how it works… Learn your craft. Buy the right camera and lens setup. Build-acquire the housing. Figure out optics in water. Watch weather. Select a swell, tide, surf break, weather pattern with the correct potential combination. Wake at 4 am, Prep your gear. Have a little coffee, but not too much because you do not want to pee in your wetsuit during morning feeding hour, and sharks feel the charge from your camera body and sometimes come for

Voice

Lone Voice Extreme athlete Garrett MacNamara has been visiting, and we are working on a few projects. He sat next to me as I rapidly did a search for a print file that a client had requested. In ten minutes this is what I pulled out of one of this season’s file folders. I doubt many, if any eyes have seen them or hearts heard the songs these images sing. In my files they are nothing particularly unusual. So does the fact that many people do not know they exist matter? What about the other thousand or so similars? Oh,

Fifty Waves to Leave Your Lover For

I live in a place many consider to be California’s Gold Coast. The term conjures up images of glassy warm Winter days, and crisp blue green lines which swell and pitch into morning light, flashing golden with a brilliance that is breathtaking and addicting as it sets an emotional hook in one’s soul. Dolphins reflecting dawn on glistening lean muscular bodies are syncopating rhythmic reflections which dart into the pull of northwest groundswells and burst into amber flecked projectiles as energy and joy erupt in the life pulse of a distant storm, that ebbs on the shores of this place.

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