January 2008 - the month that was

POPPY

My Sister Charlotte is a professional dog photographer in Australia, and I have always been totally impressed with how she captures the personalities of dogs with such emotion and technical finess. I love dogs too, and have put a few pics up on the blog before. Poppy below stars in this post as well as this one from last year.

new groms

The Esplanade Surf School was at Blackhead this arvo taking the new groms through the basics.

Students and teachers

St Kilda was absolutely packed today mostly with the new student population with shiny new boards and wetties, the surf shops must be doing a booming trade at the moment..
I have been corrected, these are not new students, but locals.. but you know what I mean yeah?

Meanwhile (below) Hayley carved some clean lines...

And with the Isolated DVD release at the Ori tonight, I managed to get Hayden Parsons himself working on the left side of the pier.

Timeless Style

Above, my favourite tree at Brighton was uprooted last week, was feeling quite gutted about it. Apparantly it was blocking the view from the Lifesaving clubrooms to the beach, and hindering 'lifesaving operations' also as the area is a reserve, of which the goal is to have it turned back into natives. The tree was an Australian Ngaio, and will be replaced with a New Zealand Ngaio. But still sad to see sucjh a beautiful tree fall regardless of its nationality.

Below a short time at Blackhead, ended up as a few long chats, and just the odd photo.. Luke Grubb showing timeless style again.

Crazy Stuff

Sometimes crazy stuff happens around full moon for me. This month has been especially crazy, loosing the blog for 3 days and frantically painting every spare minute for an exhibition.

Since there have been no real blog posts for the last almost a week, here is a bit of a catchup.
Been doing some serious gardening over the summer, and a very still evening me and Jay decided to burn off some of the larger dry wood that has been gathering under the willows at the bottom of the garden. Last month we mapped out and sprayed the lawn and have begun digging off the top dead grass layer and with a newly acquired soil tiller off trademe the garden beds will be mulched well, turned over and planted out with natives

Being resourceful and a hopeless romantic, I couldn't let a good bonfire pass without some fire baked potatoes in foil, which we enjoyed swimming in butter and garlic by the glow of the fire as the sun set.

Below: Caity going out at our favourite local

ISOLATED DVD Dn Premiere

don't forget
Saturday 26th Jan
The Ori
8.30pm
(This is will be a massive night in Dunno's)
Tickets to each premiere are $5, available at the door.

full moon firing

Full moon action again, against the sea wall, some fiery sprays shooting up the wall.

2007 MONTAGE

below a montage of shortboard shots 2007
( will take some time to load, but it's fun to play with)

Maori Midden found

Images of the location of the Maori Midden discovered while excavation began for the St Clair Resort Hotel on The Espalande.

Middens around the country have been protected by covenants under the Historic places act like the one at Kohutuhutu Road, Raumati, which was discovered when development started on the Palms subdivision.

Middens are places where the remains of food (such as shellfish and bones), ash and charcoal from fires, and other traces of settlement can be found. Such middens provide evidence that early Māori settlements were often coastal, and that food from the sea was an important part of the diet.

phew! I GOT IT BACK

wooo hooo!

From the emails I really didn't realise the varied reasons why people come to the blog, what they appreciated about it, how often and just what it means to them.
deep thanks to each and every one of you for all the support and crossed fingers.

namaste all

ladder 4

Got a couple of pics from the South Coast Boardriders ladder 4 club event today.

And earlier in the morning down south a little, pic was a bit light affected so did a mild arty photoshop to it.

those water pics

My second experience with a camera out in the surf. Pictured left is the Kodak $21.55 'single use' disposable 35mm film camera I used, just a short step up from the piece of **** that I bought off trademe a few months back.
Having only been a 'from land' shooter I have always been eager to shoot from the water. There are so many photo possibilities out there I see when surfing that are missed. So my thinking goes.. I have a 6mp digital camera with a proper underwater housing.. never used, I don't want to flood it my first few goes out, and only have shitty pics as a result.. so practice a bit with crappy disposable cameras that cost next to nothing.
What I want to achieve: practicing getting in the right position for the photos, where to sit, and how to position myself without getting in the way of the surfers.

What I found: What a completely different experience! Just free swimming around I had a ball out in the surf with the Kodak, although I know I do need to get some flippers to be able to be more responsive in direction changes and moving faster, the beach break I was at has often unpredictable peaks coming through. Its pretty hard work, and I can see that its a very skilled art, I take my hat off to the masters of water photography, likes of Chris Garden, Ray Collins etc


So after 30 mins of effort I passed the camera on to Jono who took some cool shots from his board ( much better than my efforts):

and then Caitlin had a go, Jay had the camera at that stage and they swapped, caity took a great shot of Jay taking off on a wave on her new board, not quite in frame, but potential, and then a cool shot (love her creativity) of her under water :0) :

lumpy offshores now

What started as me dropping Caity off to a mates place to stay the night at 3pm ended up a a bit of an epic muck around mission. First thing was dropping off my new 35mm film from a throw-away underwater camera for developing. ( got them back and they're better than the last lot, will put up some scanned ones soon).. did a bit of a beach hop along the city coast for four hours... very relaxing, as I am back to work tomorrow.

Caitlins new board

Caitlin has been working very hard on a few jobs over summer and with her savings decided to buy a new board. She knew exactly what she wanted, and thats what she got.
Thanks to R&R Sport for hooking her up .. she's stoked with it, and has been improving heaps even over the last few days on it.
Her first surf on it.. heading out in the am with Jay

Above and below right: Hayley came out with us too

And couldn't resist putting up a shot of these three bodyboarding groms having a ball.