received the brand new issue of NZ Surfing today.
It’s chock full of sick images from Indo, including 5 pages of my photos from the Lombok trip I did with Mikey Mallaliue and Alex Dive. The Billabong trip to Krui looks epic, and just to remind you that NZ still has world class waves there’s a Primo roady featuring perfect Raglan and Taranaki.
I also managed to get a shot of myself surfing in there, which is definitely a bonus of teaching your girlfriend how to take photos.
Go buy it!
Insight put on a hell of a party last night for their garage artists exhibition. Held in the St Paul’s church basement on Symonds street in Auckland. There was a bunch of cool art taped to the walls, 3 awesome bands and an endless supply of Export 33. I combined 2 of my favorite hobbies, taking photos and drinking beer, making my debut as official paparazzi guy. The photos are going to run in Vice.
Push play to view the gallery and use your arrow keys to scroll through the images or click the thumbnails below.
It seems like every second washed up pro surfer is picking up a guitar and becoming a musician. But here’s two different takes on surf music.
I’m unsure if “The Drums” have ever actually been surfing before, but these guys do a pretty sweet job of mixing classic 60’s surf music with a little bit of contemporary Indie. Regardless of if these guys are regulars in the line-up I’m down with them. They’re giving away this track for free on the NME website.
Now Ken Gordon is definitely a surfer, apparently he’s an Opotere local. But what inspired the 53 year old “Astro-Punk poet” to produce this song and video I’ll never know. Taking on the world of high finance, and corruption…from a longboard he reckons!? Although this vids only had 230 views in 7 months I can see it gaining momentum and becoming a cult classic.
I think maybe it’s better if the surf music is left to the non-surfers??
I’ve done my own share of terrible photoshop over the years which is why I enjoy this website so much. I’ve seen a few shockers in surf photography so here’s my first installment in surf photoshop disasters. This isn’t my photo, it’s one I found online.
I can imagine the creation of this image went a little like this. “Arty shots are so cool right now. Righto where’s that free retro photoshop action I downloaded? Yep looking good, wait it needs something more, what’s it called when an image is dark around the edges? A vingerette or something? Oh I’ve only got a square one…. I’ll just put it on twice, no one will notice.” Original image found here.
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Then there’s this fine piece of work from Red Bull.
Marketing guy “Ok we want like 5 Mick Fannings standing together on the beach, we’ll get Mick and take 5 different photos of him and then stitch them together”. Design guy “Nah all I need is a couple of pictures of Mick’s head and 30 minutes with photoshop, I’ll do such a good job you won’t even be able to tell it’s not real.” Original image found here.
Let me know if you spot any others.
Everyone has a blog these days, unfortunately like this one, most are rarely updated and are filled with garbage. When I’ve got a bit of time on my hands, these are some of the blogs I check out.
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Lewis Samuels might just be the best writer in surfing. His “power rankings” after each world tour event are legendary. In between contests he keeps the surfing world entertained by finding retarded aspects of surf culture and ridiculing them. The comments section is often as amusing as the original posts and a few of the comment lurking peanut gallery have launched their own sites, most notably nugable.com which is pretty funny in it’s own right.
Lewis was kind enough to run a photo dispatch on Post Surf a while ago using some of my images.
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This website is run by WT surfer Fred Patacchia and his buddy Andrew. These guys have access to the world best surfers like no one else and run some great content. Video interviews and crazy behind the scenes party photos. Fred comes across as a really intelligent and likable guy but the best posts are when Fred’s mate Kekoa “Bam” Bacalso makes guest appearances, that guy is hilarious.
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Lots of surfers have blogs, but Dion’s is the best. Dion’s smart enough to realize that people don’t want to just read about him, so he also posts about stuff he likes, hot models, new music tracks, cool photos and slickly made surf videos. Good formula.
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I was having a cry the other day because my Terabyte hard drive fried and I lost all my stuff, including my collection of surf videos. My buddy Chris showed me this Brazilian blog which has just about all the surf vids I had and many more available for download. Is it illegal or unethical to download movies I already bought and lost? I don’t know and don’t care.
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This blog is an off-shoot from Stab Magazine and it’s pretty zany. There’s a number of contributors who post about surfing, religion, politics, airlines and other crazy shit. I think I’m not intelligent enough to get into some of the content, but I love the reviews of the other surf mags, where they all get written off to make us realize they are no where near as awesome as Stab.
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This is the blog of Whangamata photographer Daniel “Digger” Davies. When I take a photo of someone falling off I usually erase it there and then. But Digger saves these images and makes the most of them, posting the shots on his blog with some amusing commentary.
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This is the blog of the Hobgood twins. Mostly DIY style with a lot of the video content shot by Damo and CJ themselves. These guys are pretty funny and their posts often makes me feel better about my own terrible spelling.
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NZSURFINGMAGAZINE.WORDPRESS.COM
Occasionally when Cory Scott has a little spare time from being the Editor, Senior Photographer and Photo Editor of NZ Surfing magazine he posts some gold on his blog.
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Josh Kerr’s seems like a nice enough guy, but his blog is a little bland. Fortunately he’s got some mad skills on a surfboard and after he bores you by giving you a tour of his accommodation or whatever you’ll get to watch some mind blowing footage.
I spent a bit of time at the screen printers today. Mad colour everywhere, and now also on my sweater, on my camera and on my camera bag. If you need a good screen printer contact the fine folks at Diffuse.
Insight are putting on a bit of a shin-dig next weekend for their Garage Artist exhibition. I’ve got a black and white collage in there which you can check out by clicking here. There’s going to to be free beer, some good bands and apparently I’m also going to be official paparazzi guy for Vice, so come along and I’ll make you famous.
Few waves around the last couple of days but due to family, work and surfing commitments this was the only photo I took.
The clever Anderson Brothers has done a collaboration with Sex Wax to produce these ace looking wax skull things. For $300US you can be the proud owner of a limited run of 20 per colour, just don’t leave it on a sunny window sill. It doesn’t say if it’s original sex wax (terrible crap) or my favourite quick humps (best wax on the market)?
I love the Surfline Portfolio Series. A bunch of amazing surf photographers have their portfolios online here, with an audio commentary of each shot. Really interesting to check out. Below are a few of my favorite images, hover your mouse over each shot for photo credit.
I like this concept so much I was thinking about making my own portfolio, but I need to take some better photos first. NZ’s top dog has his own portfolio up on worldprosurfers.com. Check it out, this man is a legend.
Now this is how you deal with a drop-in. Best thing I’ve seen in a long time. Read about it on Surfer Magazine’s website.
Woke up early this morning to some fun waves. The locals would probably complain that it was a little windy, slightly wrong swell direction or a bit inconsistent, but to me it was pumping, although a touch cold…
