Ho Ho Hoping...

Apologies for being a day late - I was eating, drinking and being merry. I hope that all of you enjoyed a white Christmas/Winterval, whether white snowy or white sandy, and wish you a great final week to round out 2011. Spend a bit of time doing stuff that makes you smile.

Whether you're a regular reader, drop-in sporadically or have stumbled upon this by accident and not clicked away yet, thanks heaps for pausing to take a look. I hope that you enjoy the blog as much as I enjoy producing it; there're a few plans bubbling away which I hope will throw up some content that'll entertain and keep you checking back through next year too.

Have a great week and see you January 1st.

Before the Bomb

It seems that my habit of visiting some place within a month (either side) of some news-worthy event or disaster continues.

On Thursday lunchtime an explosion destroyed the Argana Cafe (in the top left of the first image) in Djemaa el-Fna, the main square in Marrakech, Morocco and took the lives of fifteen people.

It took me a solid day to get hold of any details however because of some ridiculous event in the UK clogging up all the news channels, but it was strange getting my photos back from the lab yesterday and comparing them to the ones in the newspapers. I took these photos just about two weeks ago when our train terminated in the red city and we spent a couple of days checking out the souks in the Medina before moving on to the mountains then the Ocean. It's an amazing place, designated a UNESCO world heritage site and just an incredible place to set up a camera and watch the world happen, particularly at sundown. Around this time the centre of the square is transformed into a giant outdoor food-court with stalls and a lot of steam and smoke, surrounded by carts selling orange juice and mint tea, musicians, snake charmers, story tellers and men with tame monkeys all of whom are vying for the attention of all the visitors (many of whom are local Moroccans as well as a solid number of European tourists), not to mention the soundtrack of the muezzins from all the nearby mosques.

Morocco has escaped much of the recent change sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East thanks to it's comparatively liberal monarchy and government and their recent reforms, so it is unclear why the attack took place, should it be confirmed as such. Makes me shudder to think about it though, as there's never anything less than a thronging mass of humanity moving through and around Djemaa el-Fna.

Hopefully though recent events won't change the place and life there can carry on, it's too interesting and fascinating a place to allow a bomb to alter such a culturally rich tapestry.

The food stalls in the centre of the square, all air-conditioned and some, I was assured, with 5 michelin stars. They're smokey, insanely busy and a lot cheaper and more interesting than the fancy tourist restaurants surrounding the square.

Carrying a tripod can be a massive pain, until you arrive somewhere like this at night and it becomes clear why you bothered.

A stall selling traditional Moroccan lanterns inside one of the souks. Cross processed colour transparency film.

The menu. Cross processed colour transparency film through a 40 year-old camera.

Mint tea.

A friend of mine once said that it's worth getting a budget flight to Morocco just to have an orange. Then you can go home happy. He's not far wrong.

Two frames from my panoramic wonder-camera from the roof terrace of a cafe on the edge of Djemaa el-Fna. I paid some ridiculous price for a mint-tea just so they'd let me in and I could take some photos from up there.

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.

A Glimpse Through the Lens of Mr Joe Curren

Those of you with one foot in the surfing world will probably have heard of Joe Curren: born into one of surfings most iconic families, his father Pat was one of the original pioneers of the North Shore of Oahu, and in particular the big surf of Waimea and is an esteemed big wave gun shaper, whilst his elder brother Tom was America's first World Champion and one of modern surfing's most influential stylists. Joe has the style and flow gifted by his genetics, but rather than following the well trodden road of competitive surfing he has instead forged a career as a free surfer and photographer.

Joe travels to surf and take photographs. Rather than being a surf photographer however, his output is more that of a photographer who surfs, allowing it to influence rather than define his work. A staunch advocate of shooting on film and one of the lucky few to own a Hasselblad X-Pan which produces the stunning images above, he is one of the most prolific chroniclers of the fabled right hand point break at Rincon near his home in Santa Barbara, California.

In between stints at home as the the crown prince of Rincon, Joe travels to some of the more far-flung locales of the surfing world such as Iceland, West Africa, the Great Lakes, Taiwan and Japan to surf and shoot photos.

His website and blog are well worth taking the time to dig through and appreciate some of his photographic work which is as artful as his surfing, then take the inspiration, buy some rolls of film and go catch a plane.

http://www.joecurrenphotography.com/

http://www.joecurrenphotography.com/blog/

http://driftsurfing.com/features/2009/PF_joe_curren/p1.html

PANOVISION

Back in the depths of winter I found my dream camera on a certain internet auction site: a Hasselblad x-pan 35mm panoramic rangefinder camera. I quickly figured out which of my meagre possessions I could sell and even dipped into my sacred surfboard budget but it ended up selling for four times my bid. Who was I kidding??! As a consolation prize I had a rummage in my camera box and pulled out a crappy "panoramic" point and click excuse of a camera, basically a cheap toy thing with two bits of plastic screening the top and bottom of the frame cropping it out and making a wider than normal image. I put a crap roll of film in the crap little camera and stuffed it in my pocket. 36 shots and 5 months later I got the film developed, and just look at what came out, here's my top ten...



Early January, police warnings to make no unnecessary journeys due to heavy snow. We loaded up the Landrover and drove across Bodmin Moor, Davidstow Moor and onto Dartmoor to go climbing, passing scenes like this.


A junky needs their fix. A mile inland the snow and ice forced us to turn around and settle for the junky surf of home: MJH encased in neoprene heading in whatever.

Davo and me could check the waves from our loungeg window at low tide, but as the water pushed in we had to walk along to the cliff top. February evening, trying to decide if it's worth getting cold for.

My friends Rob and Sarah are my inspiration for living well. They live in a walled garden on an organic herb farm with their chooks, ducks and sheep, off the grid and an example of the good life for the rest of us.

A wide angle view of another perfect wave going hollow and unridden at a certain spot in West Australia. Not for long as I was already halfway into my wetsuit.

My good friend Krede with a truck full of big boards for riding big waves. We only needed our regular boards this afternoon for surf number 2.

My housemate Matt pausing/tensing for breath and a look around on a gnarly and as yet un-named free solo ascent a stones throw from our house on the nearby cliffs.

The "other" view of Pentire Head, with Gulland and Newland sitting seaward. Turns out it's a beautiful bit of coastline whichever direction you're looking at it from.

I shaped an alaia recently, an ancient Hawaiian wooden and finless surfboard design. Before I could though I had to recondition the hand plane that I inherited from my Grandad who was a wooden boatbuilder and master cabinetmaker. I felt the pressure of craftsmanship and I hope I did a worthy job.

Andreya Triana under the spotlight fronting Bonobo on the recent tour for the Black Sands LP.

With no control over aperture, exposure or even focus this camera was always a gamble machine. There's something about panoramic images though, I guess there's a reason why our eyes are side by side and not one above the other after all.