Excuses, Excuses

I have an apology to make to those of you who are dedicated readers of this blog, because over the past couple of months the regularity of my posts (which for over five years went out almost every Sunday) has wobbled somewhat.  The reason is that for a little over a year now I have been transforming the way that I work and building a business beyond my freelance work, and for the past nine months or so this project has often taken precedence - resulting in the frequency of my postings to An Tor Orth An Mor becoming a little erratic.  So, without further ado, let me introduce you all to Hailer; you can hold Hailer entirely responsible for the disruption to your Sunday evening browsing.

Hailer is a difficult entity for me to label easily, but it is essentially in the business of storytelling.  You could pin such labels as "content marketing studio", "digital marketing agency" or "brand growth consultancy" on it, and all are equally valid definitions and yet each one on its own doesn't adequately describe what Hailer does.  What Hailer does is craft the stories and imagery that define brands, grow followings and improve performance.  If you're interested in a more concise explanation and taking a look at the various client case studies then please head over and check out www.hailer.media, otherwise I'll just be repeating myself in this post.  

The development of Hailer isn't the death knell for An Tor Orth An Mor, just a separation of my personal and freelance photographic work from the content that I produce regularly for a number of brands and businesses.  I intend to return to producing regular posts for this blog and am developing a new home for it (watch this space), whilst Hailer's "notebook" blog will feature syndicated client work and news.  If you like what you see on the website then may I suggest you give Hailer a follow on your social media platform of choice (instagram, facebook or twitter) so that you can keep getting more of the same.

Here's just a tiny taster...

Sharing adventures on the Cornish Coast with Cornish Rock Tors

Ongoing brand management and development for wooden surfboard makers Otter Surfboards

 Building an online surf magazine with an international following for Surf Simply

  

From Bottles to Boardshorts

Very often the only time that I read any of the one newspaper that I buy each week during the winter is when I am tearing it up whilst laying a fire each evening.  This week, one small article in the Saturday Telegraph (not my preferred broadsheet, I must admit) caught my eye, titled “The world is drowning in plastic waste”.  I paused in my fire building and sat back on the lounge floor to read it.

It reported that each year more plastic is being dumped in the oceans than was produced worldwide in the 1960s.  That is the equivalent of five shopping bags full of plastic waste being thrown into the sea for every foot of the world’s coastline.  Shameful, huh? 

The world produced 299 million tons of new plastic last year but a new report by Washington’s Worldwatch Institute claims that in Europe we only recycle a quarter of our plastic waste, burning another third for heat or power.  In the USA less than 10% is recycled.  And what becomes of the rest?  Thrown away.   

Clearly we have a significant problem on our hands, and one that’s true impact has yet to be revealed. 

Riz Boardshorts are all too aware of this ticking time bomb, and have set out on a mission to become the world’s first 100% recycled and recyclable boardshort brand – a worthy mission in my eyes.  Their aim is not just to use recycled polyester for all of their products, but also to utilise recycled plastics in all of the other components that are often overlooked by companies producing “recycled” clothing – elements like trims, zippers, buttons and Velcro.  They aren’t stopping at a recycled item of clothing that you can send back to them when worn out to be recycled again, however, and want to take it all one-step further.  Their plan is to take plastic bottles collected from beaches and turn that marine litter into a pair of boardshorts.  They’re currently coming towards the end of a crowdfunding campaign to help them achieve this, and are just a short way off their target with a week to go.  Please check it out and if you like what they’re doing or fancy any of the rewards that they’re offering in return for pledges then please go ahead and support them.  

I’ve harped on enough in past blog posts about the various things that you can do to reduce the amount of plastic that you use and tackle the problem of marine plastic pollution, so I won’t repeat myself.  I will say, however, that the Surfers Against Sewage Big Spring Beach Clean series is taking place again this March, over the weekend of the 28^th and 29^th which is the first weekend of the school Easter holidays.  I’ll be helping out with the Polzeath beachclean on Sunday morning organised by Cornish Rock Tors.  If you can join us there (11am start) that would be wonderful, or if you can attend another beach clean event or simply do a #2minutebeachclean next time you visit the beach then it all counts just the same.  Every little helps, after all.

Images of James Otter of Otter Surfboards, shot for Riz Boardshorts.  James and Riz recently interviewed each other about their respective companies attempts to reduce their environmental impact.  You can check out James interviewing Riz here, and Riz interviewing James here.

Riz Boardshorts "Beautiful Boardshorts for Beautiful Oceans" campaign.

Slyding Sunrise to Sunset

This past Saturday saw the finless clans of the British surf community converge on Lusty Glaze beach to compete in this year's Approaching Lines Slyder Cup, presented by the good folks at Reef.  With it being just a few weeks shy of the winter solstice, the "Friction Affliction Winter Convention" filled the few short hours of daylight and extended the magical golden hour to cover what felt like half of the heats contested.  Huey co-operated and sent some solid lumps shoreward for the duration of the day, testing all competitors waterman skills as well as their abilities to ride waves with no traction.  Here's a selection of my shots from sun-up to sun-down that sum up a great day of wave sliding.

At first light the surf looked fun.  An hour later it had jumped in size by about four feet as a westerly swell filled in, providing big, cold and bumpy conditions for the bodysurfers.

Swasssshhhhh zone stand-off.  Crabbing my way half-way up a rock face and balancing my camera on my knees doesn't get quite the same results as a tripod, it would seem.

There was a lot of water moving around the small bay as the bodysurfers competed at high tide, with wash-through sets leaving the "smaller" inside waves as the only consistent options.

Wooden surfboard shaper James Otter preparing to swim out with a handplane produced using offcuts from one of his surfboards. 

I'm pretty sure that Rich Pope was entered into every category.  Here he takes on an outside bomb on a 4'x1' bent plywood bellyboard before going on to win the air mat category and take second place overall.

The Otter Surfboards demostration station - showing what goes on at a bodysurfing "build-your-own" workshop experience day.

Jimbo Bennet returned to defend his title, drifting all over the place on an albacore with control and grace - here delaying the drop with a mid-face tail slide.

Pat from Surfboard Art Wales made the trip down and caught some screamers in the paipo category, switching between prone and kneeling and causing the judges to quickly glance at the scoring system.

Sarah Bentley, deserved winner of the "Most Stylish Human" award for making drop like this time and time again on a surfboard with no fins.

The twilight expression session saw all manner of wave-sliding craft in the line-up, including Ross Curwen and his trusty tray.

The mat finalists making walk to the waters edge at low tide, and considering how they might paddle a large, buoyant, bag of air out through shifty overhead surf.

Contenders ready!  The finless finalists.

Jimbo Bennet using nothing but rail to stick a drop that most surfers would be stoked on if they had a few fins in their board.

Finless friends, congratulating each other on a well surfed day and demonstrating the camaraderie that exists between the tribes.

Event Director Chris Nelson with Wooden Surfboard maker James Otter, watching the sun set on the last minutes of the grand final and a day of great surfing.

Surfing on the Silver Screen

I don't really watch all that many surf movies any more.  That is, apart from one four-day weekend every year in London when the London Surf / Film Festival is on and I binge on airs and barrels on the big screen.  The other 361 days of the year I usually click on any one of the handful of three minute web-edits that are posted on a near daily basis, and after about ten seconds I either get enormous work-guilt or I get bored of seeing the same old thing yet again and click away.  I don't think that I've got A.D.D. but my attention span for surf films without any narrative is definitely pretty short.  That's where the LS/FF swoops in and rescues me; a carefully crafted line-up of surf films balancing documentaries with adventure and art, feature length flicks with quality shorts, and all on a massive screen.  If anything is going to hold my attention more than the screen of my laptop, it is a full-size cinema screen in an auditorium full of hooting surfers.    

This year I had the pleasure of multi-tasking for the four days of the festival; I was invited to be the event photographer, as well as exhibiting both a selection of my photography and a display for Otter Surfboards.  It kept me good and busy, but I still managed to sneak into the back of a choice selection of movies and get my fill.  Here's a stack of images that I shot, alongside one film selection from each night for you to take a look at…

Thanks to LS/FF Directors Chris and Demi for inviting me along again and for putting on such a great festival.

This year the festival moved to a new venue at the Genesis Cinema in E1, and in one fell swoop both doubled its capacity and damn near filled it.

Surf photographer, cold water adventurer and plastic pollution campaigner Tim Nunn gave an incredible slideshow presentation on Saturday night.

5x ASP Women's World Champion Stephanie Gilmore paid the festival a visit for the UK premiere of the biographical documentary film "Stephanie in the Water".  She smiled constantly and and posed for photos for a good couple of hours with fans, as well as throwing some shakas with the big painted cut-out of Rob Machado produced by Chris from Makemake.

I carried the Otter Surfboards exhibition across London on the tube in a hold-all bag, and managed to bring it back to Cornwall in one piece too a few days later.  Thankfully my exhibition, on the other side of the corner, was delivered for me in a big cardboard box.

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Expencive Porno Movie from Nothingwillchange on Vimeo.

You Know, Yeah?

Mat Arney Content Marketing, Photography and Writing Portfolio 2014 from Mat Arney on Vimeo.

You know that I do this whole photography, writing and content marketing thing for a living, right?  

Last week I caught up with my Dad, and he made a very valid point that I hope this blog post will address:  I don't market my work well enough.  I was having a bit of a work-whinge (no doubt revolving around the fact that I work a lot but that it never feels like it's quite enough) and unloading all of the regular freelancer's anxieties in his ear, when he highlighted the fact that most readers of this blog, or visitors to my website, probably wouldn't know that this is my job.  I market my clients very well, through ongoing content marketing campaigns and bespoke photography and copywriting commissions, but I don't actually market these services to other potential clients.  So here goes:

My name is Mat and I am a storyteller.

I develop and distribute high quality media content - mostly in the form of images and words - that builds lasting relationships between a brand and its customers.

This might be bespoke photography or copywriting for a website or a print marketing campaign.  It is more valuable to a brand, however, in the form of regular, creative and dynamic content that potential and existing customers engage with through various marketing channels.  Custom digital content such as blogs, e-newsletters, photo essays and short videos increase website performance (particularly for search engines) and social media engagement, helping your brand to reach more potential customers and consistently converts views to sales.

Every business needs to share its message.  Being able to communicate what you do and why, in order to engage customers, is the key to a successful marketing strategy in the digital age.

You have a story, let me help you tell it.

So there you have it:  I'm an award-winning, published, photographer and writer with an international client list including Cloudy Bay Wines, Nokia UK, Otter Surfboards, Hog Island Oyster Co and the London Surf Film Festival, and I'd like to work with you.

Let's talk:

All of my contact details are in the last frame of the short video clip above, or you can use mat(at)matarney dot com, send me a message on facebook, instagram or twitter or leave a comment here and I'll get back to you.  Thanks.  

Splinters

Wooden surfboards are at the root of many countries traditional wave riding cultures, and this is certainly the case for Papua New Guinea.  Here, "splinter" surfboards have been used for generations to ride the waves that break over the reefs and black sand beaches, the boards being carved from indigenous trees or pieces of old canoes.  At the end of last month the multi-award winning documentary film Splinters toured the UK with several screenings in the South West and London, including one just down the road from me in Porthtowan which I was quick to get tickets for.  Andrew Abel, President of the Surfing Association of Papua New Guinea and a star of the film, was on hand and I was lucky enough to catch up with him after the screening to ask him some questions about wooden surfboard riding and it's place in the surf culture of PNG to feature on the Otter Surfboards journal that I curate.  This piece went out on the Otter Surfboards site last week but, for those of you who may not have seen it, here it is for you to enjoy.

What exactly is a splinter and where did they get their name from?

Splinters is a name given to the traditional boards that the local kids belly board or surf on around PNG...the local equivalent pidgin word is “palang”.  A Splinter can be cut out from an old canoe or cut from a tree trunk and shaped according to the eye of the carver, be it a young kid or his father or uncle...these days with the introduction of modern surfboards donated by the SAPNG and purchased by local surfers from visiting surfing tourists, Splinters are being carved to nearly identical dimensions as fibreglass boards, with fins fashioned from timber or plastic and leg ropes out of twine and tyre inner-tubes.

How did surfing on wooden boards develop in PNG?

Surfing on Palang wooden boards in PNG developed hundreds of years ago and has been passed down from father to son until the present day.  Over the past 27 years I have, in my role as the president of SAPNG, introduced modern boards but at the same time respected the craft of the resource custodians still carving and surfing their own hand carved Palang or Splinters as it is unique and something that must be continued and protected from dying out.  These surfboards are very much part of our PNG surfing culture.

Are they still used or seen regularly?

Yes, Palang boards or Splinters are still being ridden prone all around PNG, and more so being surfed standing up in the surf clubs in Vanimo, Sandaun Province, Tupira Surf Club, Bogia District, Madang province, New Ireland Province and in Wewak, East Sepik Province.

What are they made from and how are they made?The Palang or Splinters are made from light weight timber from the jungles along the coastline....the boards are cut out and shaped using axes and bush knives or machetes.

​

Are splinters/wooden surfboards a valued part of PNG's surf culture and historical development?

Yes absolutely, and myself and SAPNG take great pride in them and work hard to ensure that this important part of our surfing culture is carried on for generations to come. We are instilling in the traditional resource custodian host communities that we work with (in partnership in developing the surfing and surf tourism industry of PNG under our SAPNG model and policies) that this is unique to PNG and an added attraction and show piece of the evolution of the growing surfing culture of PNG.  I have, in my role as President of SAPNG, been approached by the PNG National Museum to develop an exhibition within the museum to celebrate our surfing culture and evolution. In addition, whilst I was in California presenting the Splinters movie I was asked to do Q&A at the San Clemente Surfing History Musuem and the Director of the Museum asked if I/SAPNG would be able to donate a genuine Splinters carved board to sit in their collection of historic surfboards alongside surfboards ridden by the likes of Duke Kahanamoku.

I am currently working on this and at the right time I will be taking two Splinters, that are sun bleached and worn from years of surfing, to be presented to the History of Surfing Museum in California so that SAPNG has a place amongst the surfing nations of the world.  I hope also to be able to present a Splinters surfboard to a national collection in the UK.

Would you like to see a return to using native (and less toxic?) resources for surfboard materials in PNG?I think it is inevitable that all our young local surfers in all of ourSAPNG established surf clubs will want to step up to modern day fibreglass boards as they all want to surf better and compete against their peers and other clubs. However, the art of carving a Palang or a Splinter only requires an axe and machete/bush knife without the need for any toxic materials like resin to make such a unique board, therefore I can see the traditional boards still being used by the younger grommies coming through the ranks until they are old enough and proficient enough to step up to a modern shortboard. 

In having said that, as part of staging our national surfing titles, the SAPNG will at all events ensure that we have an "expression session" style event where all competing surfers from the respective clubs will have an opportunity to have their best surfers compete on traditional Palang/Splinter boards, on the same waves and under the same ISA competition surfing rules as they do on modern day boards.  

In actual fact, as we are working towards staging our inaugural Mens WQS and Womens WCT in PNG in partnership with ASP Australasia, one of the events planned will pitch local PNG surfers against the visiting WQS and WCT surfing on Palang surfboards, on their home turf.  This will be the ultimate challenge for the PNG surfers who are experts in surfing these Palang/ Splinters to show off their skills against some of the world's best in the same waves and surfing conditions.

For me personally, as the President and Co Founder of SAPNG as we mark 27 years since foundation, it will be the most exciting moment seeing the kids that we have been nurturing being given the opportunity to stand tall and represent SAPNG and PNG on our traditional boards and show the surfing world how it is done.  For the families and clans of these young PNG surfers, it will be something to be proud of and remember for generations to come!

I would like to thank Andrew Abel and the Surfing Association of Papua New Guinea (SAPNG) for taking the time to talk wooden surfboards with me and for providing me with such a wonderful set of images to accompany his answers. 

All images courtesy of and copyright SAPNG.

You can find and follow SAPNG on facebook if you're interested in finding out more about this intriguing surf destination.

Paipo-a-Go-Go

Me, a big baked bean and some deep-winter wedges.

What with it having been a long weekend here in the UK and many other countries, I should really have written this post a week ago so that the classic long weekend of DIY hammering and sawing could be channeled into producing one of these wonderful little surf craft.  But I've just moved house and spent the last few weeks without internet access, so now the challenge is for you to make one of these in two days instead of three next weekend…

But just what is it?

Dan Crockett on an Otter paipo.

When Captain James Cook dropped anchor in a Hawaiian bay in 1778 he witnessed many of the locals riding waves lying down on wooden boards.  These basic wave riding craft are called paipos (pronounced pipe-oh) and the name is derived from the Hawaiian "Pae Po'o" which means "to surf headfirst".  Generally around 3 feet long, the paipo is the little brother of larger finless Hawaiian designs such as the alaia and olo, the alaia having experienced a resurrection of sorts over the past decade in alternative surf-craft circles.  Travellers to and from the Hawaiian islands at the turn of the last century exported the paipo and it was adapted at various coastal locations around the world, becoming known most commonly as a "bellyboard".  In the 1970's Tom Morey introduced the boogie board and foam bodyboards instantly overshadowed the traditional paipo, with just a few small pockets of traditionalists keeping the flame burning - mostly in Hawaii.

I made my paipo a few years ago, and it's the sort of board that sits in my quiver waiting for a time when I've surfed enough good waves on my regular stick to make heading out on something a little different not seem like much of a risk to my monthly wave-count.  I managed to get hold of a 3'6" long paulownia kitchen worktop off-cut from a friend (the same wood that the majority of alaias are made from) and wondered for a while what I could make with it.  The worktop was made from a number of planks of varying widths, all glued together.  I cut these apart, trimmed them to uniform widths and then glued them back together with thin strips of a random hardwood (that I had some strips of lying around my workshop) sandwiched in between them.  I planed down the hardwood stringers and then drew out a template for my paipo.  It looked like a giant baked bean.  Once I'd cut out the shape of the board I shaped the rails using a small block plane (turned down at the tail, up at the nose and 50/50 through the middle section) with the board clamped against a workbench.  Because I have a bit of a thing for not wasting off-cuts I cut a band to go around nose on the deck, using the same template, and once it was glued in place I routed a groove into it to act as a hand-grip.  The whole thing was sanded smooth and then had a few coats of linseed oil to seal it before being taken for a splash in the sea.  All up it was a fun way to spend some time and I came out the other side with a new surfboard, of sorts.  It takes the bare minimum of tools (a pencil, saw, a few sash-cramps, glue, a block plane and abrasive paper) if you want to try making one yourself.  Essentially it's just a wooden bodyboard which makes it the ideal choice for shorebreaks, but it's also great just to run in with for a quick half hour in summer to catch a few waves and ride some whitewater back towards the beach.  It depends how seriously you take your surfing, I guess.  If you're open to different ways of experiencing waves though then I would definitely recommend sliding in on a few head first.

Ride anything: wave-wise and board-wise.

Check out the stoke that the crew at The Paipo Society have for these things, and keep your eyes peeled for the next Approaching Lines Slyder Cup event - celebrating finless surfing in all of it's many forms.