A Portuguese Patchwork

Having been a bit on-and-off posting to An Tor Orth An Mor over the past few weeks (due to one reason or another that has kept me away from my computer on a Sunday evening) I thought I'd take it back to some straight old, surf based, travel photography.  I was lucky enough to visit Portugal again for a few days at the end of October, and my trip coincided with the arrival of the mega-swell generated by the St Judes storm.  The images that I shot of enormous waves towering over the cliff-top lighthouse at Nazare (shortly after Carlos Burle rode a potentially record-breaking wave there) will hopefully be appearing in print at some point soon so I can't showcase them just yet.  Instead, here are some of the images that I took on the couple of days before and after whilst travelling up and down the coast between Porto and Lisbon from our base on the little island of Baleal, with just the one teaser of the swell smashing the coast at Peniche as the sun came up on that famous Monday morning.

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Patagonia London Exhibition

From Portugal I travelled to London where a selection of my surf and travel photography is now hanging on the wall downstairs in the Patagonia store in Covent Garden, alongside the heritage collection and their winter 2014 wetsuits.  I'm truly honoured to be exhibiting my work on the walls of Patagonia's flagship store in the UK and to be associated, albeit in a very minor way, with such an inspirational company.  If you live and work in the big city or are up there Christmas Shopping then please visit the store on Langley Street in Covent Garden and whilst you're there head downstairs to check it out.  Unlike in the photo above I won't be sat there awkwardly cluttering up the place. 

Smells Like September

I stepped out of my car into the sunshine at Sennen this morning and it smelt like September.  I mean, I had a real definite waft of the smell of September hit me, and it hit me like some sort of catnip.  I got so excited.  I don't know what that smell was…  the ozoney smell from the breaking waves of the small groundswell?  Cold sand and a warmer ocean?  Warm surf wax?  Coffee?  I couldn't place my finger on it but it was a clear aroma and it made me realise that it was September 1st.  It was an instant reminder of the beaches when schools are back in and work slows down for everyone who works a seasonal job, dawn surfs that aren't still "last night" as they can be in midsummer, bare feet on cold sand, French boardwalks over the sand dunes, Portuguese custard tarts and hurricane swells.  Oh!  September, how I've missed you so.  

Signs of Surf

The island of Baleal sits just of the west coast of Portugal, four kilometres north of the town of Peniche and separated the mainland by a sand spit tombola.  It is a popular surfing destination because each of the surrounding beaches works on different swell and wind directions, making the most of whatever the conditions are.  The single track road runs across the tombola and loops around the small island, with just a few small residential streets branching off it.  Because the village on the island is old, dating back hundreds of years to it's beginnings as a whaling port, the streets are narrow, cobbled, and not particularly suitable for tourist traffic.  As a consequence the island is dotted with no-entry signs to direct the flow of traffic, and every single one has had this wonderful stencil spray painted onto it: surf stencilling at it's very best.

The Check-List

Sometimes we can all get a bit picky when checking the surf.  I used to employ a rule that if I saw a surfer do three turns on a wave then I'd get straight in there, but if not then I'd stand and scrutinise the waves for ages.

How're the sets hitting the sandbank or reef?  How many waves are there in each set and how long between sets?  What're the wind and tide doing?  How many guys are there on the peak and are they getting good waves?

I hate driving away from good waves, but I also hate paddling out and just wearing close-outs on my head every couple of minutes.  In horse racing they check the "going" of the track, whilst cricket commentators always talk about the state of the wicket; in surfing we stand and observe so many interconnected variables before making the decision to commit our time to a particular spot.  But at the end of the day, plenty of non-surfers find a lot of value in staring out to sea - we get to do it all the time and with a purpose.

I seem to have an inordinate number of images of the back of my friends heads with the sea in the background.  A few years ago I collated a whole load of them into a photo essay called "Watching Waves" which was published on Drift…probably about time I updated that set and framed a load of them.

Sea + Surfer + Sky = Surf Photo(?)

I sometimes worry that surf photos can be a little bit boring.  Straight to the point in a pretty one dimensional sort of way, far too often a surf photo is just a surfer on a blue wave with a blue sky behind them.  Sometimes the sea is a bit bluer or a bit greener.  Sometimes the sky is more grey or it has some clouds in it maybe.  
White surfboard.  Black wetsuit.  You know what I mean?

But it's difficult to capture something different when, at the end of the day, it is a surf photo after all.  The focus has to be the wave and the person riding it.  There's not a whole lot of scope for creative lighting, props, or a second chance at a wave or a shot.  Foreground, background and a creative angle is all that most of us ever get to work with.  But the extra bit of the equation is an important one to keep your eyes peeled for.

Beach umbrella, sand, supertubos and some lucky guy snaking his way through a lefthand sand-bottom barrel.
Peniche, Portugal.  October 2012.



 

High Experience, Low Expense

Sometimes the best plan is to have no plan.

At the tail end of 2010 my old friend Kyle and I tried to plan a surf trip to see in the New Year with a few warmer waves. Almost every option we looked at turned into a dead end and with two weeks to go until our planned departure date I drew a circle on a map with a 6 hour flight radius to see just where we could go. After researching all of our options, most of which turned out to have four-figure price tags, we flipped a coin between Sardinia (the mediterranean island off Italy) and the Algarve coast of Portugal. The Algarve won so we booked the cheapest flight that we could find (not so cheap because of the time of year) and organised what we thought would be a beater of a hire car judging by the cost. There was barely any coin left in our budget.

After a tortuous six-week flat spell, the Atlantic coast of Europe woke up on Boxing Day growling...

So much so that the banks at nearly every west facing beach were immediately washed away. We spent the first few days clocking up the miles looking in every nook and cranny down every dirt track leading to the coast and surfing coves that were just cauldrons of churning whitewater. Big drops and one-turn-wonders on waves that were barely more than glorified closeouts. We paddled ALOT.

Budgetary requirements resulted in our rental car becoming our accomodation. Old hands at this from the combined experience of many trips on many continents, we have found that sleeping next to the bins behind restaurants is a sure fire way of making friends with local dogs on the scrounge for scraps, but also (and most importantly) of avoiding being moved on by the cops. They don't expect crew to camp here for obvious reasons so focus their attentions on waking up and shifting all the camper vans in the beach car parks.

The joy of the Algarve is that it's the most South Westerly tip of the Iberian Peninsula so when the swell gets massive and the wind comes from the North (as it did over the 2010/2011 transition) the swell wraps right around onto the South Coast. There are some incredible right-hand point breaks along here nestled under the cliffs. We scored this joint solo for an evening before word obviously got out the next day. Overhead and wedging, this made it worth sleeping in a car and eating sandwiches for a week without a doubt.

Ah 2011, nice of you to join us. Let's do this.