I think that people are the greatest fun

Calexico – Alone Again Or

Great Song

Here’s some more shots from my trip north a few weeks ago.

Metallica Pete, this guy really knows the wave well.

 

Pity about the droplets, I wonder did I cause them?

 

 

There's no way he made it out of this, but looks cool anyway.

 

 

Love the colours in this one.

Blountys Superman impression.

 

Gabe Davies is pretty much a level above any surfer I’ve ever been in the water with. He made an insane amount of barrels this day. He’s one of the guys able to setup for the barrel while popping up, on his last wave he did this right beside me, here he is setting up.

Unfortunately I didn’t kick hard enough (it was the end of my session too) and I missed the killer shot, ah well. That’s water photography for ya.

 

Here’s two shots of one of the local boys I had a quick chat with out there, anyone got a name or contact for this guy?

I’ll finish with another of those in the waves shots, pity about the bubbles.

The Last Weekend

Well it’s done.

I have a new car but Lance went out in style, taking me from Clare to North Connaught and back in a day and then going around Clare on Monday morning. He served us all.

So I’ve got a new motor, it’s a silver Avensis. So people will know who’s waving at them.

I tried a really starnge thing yesterday. I had this weird long shaped plank made from fibreglass and I was satnding on riding the waves on the beach. It was fun, I mudt try and do it more often.

Although I probably should have been shooting.

Ah the joys of it.

As usual shots to come in a day or two.

Bring on the Weekend

Ok so it’s looking might windy, but Ireland has enough bendy coastline that there should be somewhere working.

Hope you find waves, no shots with me today so here’s a video of Cain. Apparently he’s looking for sponsors, I suppose youtube isn’t such a bad idea then.

Out and about again

Finally got out to a gig for the first time in ages recently. I’ve just had too much else going on for the past while. Being predictable I went to see one of my favourite bands as opposed to a new one. I love hearing new music and I’m consistently checking various sites and blogs to see what I can get for free. But actually going in to town and paying to see a random band is a bit too much sometimes. I used to be all for that, but that was before I had to do the shopping and pay rent and drive to Clare to take photos every weekend.

It was a pretty awesomegig, but what do you expect from Jape. Matty the other guitarist and keys guy borrowed a plec from me and even remembered to give it back after the show.

Such a good show though. Crazy techno dancing included. Richie’s the only guy who could get a room full of rockers dancing like that I reckon.

 

Nice one.

Again, almost there.

This is Fintan Gillespie in a Shot I call the Aichner angle. Scott Aichner pretty much owns the under the lip shot. The wave definitely needs to be bigger but I should have concentrated more on the framing.

Ah well, still pretty happy with it.

Something for the weekend

Here’s a quick shot of epic Cregg.

Pity it was too big to paddle oput. Some guys tried and got washed right down to the beach.

Fiar play for trying.

Oh what a waste, to be lazy when you’re young

I was wondering why everyone was queueing up for petrol last night, then heard about the 8c increase this morning
Stupid recession.

Anyway, who cares I’d a great weekend, here’s some of the nearly made it shots.

Ollie O'Flaherty

Liam Joyce

Ollie & Johnny

Some people just don't care

Johnny's new spray job.

It always annoyed me when I first started shooting (and still does actually) when editors wouldn’t run shots that I thought were good. Sometimes I just don’t get what they are looking for.
I think I’m starting to realise though, the image has to be either really perfect or have some amazing quality to it so that the imperfections don’t matter.
At the start I used to think “I know it’s not as good as Mickey’s/Al’s/Sharpy’s shots but still …”
But the point is that I am actually in direct competition with these guys.
So although these knock backs at the start may have had a slight negative affect, the overall effect was to push me to be a much better photographer. Now I am definitely my own greatest critic.

Not deep enough, too many splashs on the lens

A second later and a metre to the right might have been an ok shot.

Too far away

Oldie for today

Promise I’ll have shots from the weekend up tomorrow.
In the meantime here’s Ollie getting towed in by a Dolphin.

What a Trip.

650 miles in two days.

Go on Lance, he’s still holding together and going strong.
I love it when you score after driving a long way.
Haven’t had time to go through all of the shots yet, hopefully will get something up tomorrow or Wednesday.

Here’s a messy splashy one looking out.

On an Island in the sun (part deux)

It started off about a week ago, the charts were looking bloody amazing, the wind looked a bit sketchy but in Ireland the winds are always changing. As the week progressed it became clearer that Saturday was going to be too windy to bother checking anywhere so I decided to stay in Cork until Saturday night. Friday evening was still looking pretty solid for Sunday so we kept to the plan and headed up to Clare on Saturday evening.

It turns out it’d had actually been a pretty good day, on shore but fun. Pretty much everyone had entered a surf comp and had a pretty fun day, final came down to Fergal, Ollie, Damo and Kiwi transplant Liam Joyce. They only announced the results in the pub that night so everybody was out and in pretty good form, possibly because of the cheap (i.e. free) drinks promotion that bar was running. Ferg took the win in the end, the band started playing an fun was had, until the next morning.

I picked up a crazy hungover Damo at 7am. Turns out there was a price for all those free beers

We headed down the coast to the one high tide spot we were banking on, but the wind had gone just the wrong direction during the night and the spot looked awful, good old reliable Ireland eh? Turns out the swell was way smaller than expected as well.

We headed back to Lahinch to have some brekkie. Danny macs does a pretty sweet Surfers Breakfast (good old chips for breakfast, can’t beat it) if anyone’s ever looking for something in Lahinch I’d recommend this place. We headed up to Damo’s then to check out the new Relentless DVD . It’s fricken awesome by the way, really makes me want to give up everything here and just go travelling. We actually bumped into Fergal and Lowey later on in the day. It’s pretty weird to watch a surf vid and discuss the waves and the guys style and then meet them later.

Pumped the video we decided to go looking again and headed off to reliable Dougie. By this time Ollie had joined the us and was pretty keen to get wet as well. It was small but the boys suited up anyway, Joycey was there already punting over the heads of the unsuspecting beginners in the lineup.

Damo and Ollie followed him out and proceeded to tear the crap out of the knee high dribblers.

Eventually the boys got tired of doing the same turn 7,458 times the came back in and we decided to call it a day.

We started heading back up the coast to Lahinch but along the way saw some white water off one the points and went to investigate, the tide was still a little low but there were a few slabby barrels coming through. I really wanted to make the most of the sun so I got the boys back into their suits and started racing down across the reef.

The first wave we headed out to was a left but by the time we got into the lineup the tide had pushed over the shelf and it wasn’t really doing it anymore. There was a right just around the corner that was starting to work so myself and Ollie paddled over to check it out.

The bad thing about this was that we came in at the wave from the back. If you paddle out to a wave you usually get to watch a set or two break so you can see where the impact zone is. We just randomly paddle into a spot where we though the take off was, Ollie caught a small one and was paddling back out when a proper set came through and unloaded right in front of me. I tried to go under but the water was only about two foot deep so I got a ridiculous beating in which both fins got ripped off and I ended up sitting on some dry reef 100m down the line, not nice.

Damo had paddled over by now and managed to scrape into a few little barrels himself. Ollie was perfecting his late drop technique but always seemed to be hitting the lip just past me. But these things happen, I was just happy to be out there on a sunny glassy afternoon with two mates.

Not a bad end to the day.