Wipeouts

There's something that I have always never understood and that is why are there hardly any wipeout photos in surfing mags? Personally I don't think they are a negative thing, it's just part of surfing and what happens in particular when you're learning or riding heavy waves. Some are serious thou but most are just a bruising of our self belief we could've made the wave and brings us back to reality that you have to be joking to think you were going to make that, it also pegs the confidence down a level if it's heavy enough. It's always a reaction of "ohhhhh shiiiiiit" from me when ever i see a wipeout in a video and I just end up cracking up laughing. I think if there was a wipeout page in mags every issue you would see some pretty freaky and jaw dropping photos. And it's even good to see the the top surfers miss timing things as well, they are human after all but the biggest reason that guys like fergal and Tom here wipeout is because they're pushing themselves so hard that eventually they have to come unstuck but doing this they get to know what there limits are and it works for them if you have seen any of the insane stuff they've been doing the last couple of years. So here's a couple of shots of mine and a video i found on youtube as well.
Please take not: There is alot of F$%& this and F#@% that in the video so if you have any kids my advice is to put some blue tak in their ears...

Tom

Ferg

Opps, sorry mate

Ferg

Tonnta issue #7

Well it's one of my favourite things i wait for, it sorta crept up on me this time as for me it doesn't seem that long ago the last issue was out so a big congrats to everyone involved. Going by the cover it looks to be another great issue with Portrush area as the main story, a bit on Mexico and a few other suprises. Go grab yourself a copy before they run out again. By the way if anyone has a copy of Issue #5 they don't need could you email me at hangtennz@yahoo.com as I don't have any copies left, would be much apreciated, there's a limited edition 18"x12" print of mine up for grabs for the first to get me a copy.

Cool bananas

Funny old days

1. My bedroom is on the second floor and overlooks the backyard down to the back fence and into the backyard of the neighbours place. I was looking out the window of my bedroom on a particularly sunny hot day recently watching my flatmate's dog digging up the garden right down by the back fence. Curious to know what treasures Fin had buried there I looked on in anticipation for a few minutes while he was going for gold, next thing I heard was a loud and sharp "Oi!", shifting my eyes slightly up to over the fence into the neighbours backyard to see a stunning bikini clad woman laying down pointing at me with what I assume is the husband standing beside her, red faced and pissed off and both thinking I was perving at his wife. To make matters even worst I yelled out to him before even thinking what I was actually saying "Sorry mate, I was just looking at the dog"!!! This made him very agitated so as you would do I quickly closed the blinds, grabbed me keys, ran to the car and took off before he could come around with a baseball bat or something, not really the right thing to do.

2. I was in the dining room having me breakfast and noticed a big old slimy slug on the sliding door window moving slowly but steadily to somewhere new. I had a bit of a brainwave and proceeded to put some sweet raspberry jam in front of him to the right and then some really hot chili dipping sauce at equal a distance from him on the left to see which one he would be attracted to, if I was a betting man I would've put my money on the sweeter jam but after about 10 mins of slugging along he was all over the chili and loving it but something went wrong as when he had almost eaten it all Mr. sluggy pants just fell off, i think it was a bit much for him. And that black trail is his poo, you could actually see it moving inside him and coming out the other end...

Mr. Sluggy pants was not hurt in this experiment

3. My good mate Dave is a bit of a genius with the old video camera, I decided that my trusty old car was nearing it's end and with the clutch and brakes in not great shape we decided to have some fun with it so here's a clip from one of Dave's surfing videos of us having a funny old day...
Thanks to Dave for letting rip apart your dvd and put this segment up
clik on his blog here http://danidave.blogspot.com

Roll on Autumn

Blue skies, next to no wind, how long is this going to last. Great crane driving weather and sunbathing(if you're not a redhead!), shame the building industry has gone tits up. Roll on Autumn I say or a couple of hurricanes to unusually track north instead of east. Any swell that has come in recently has been on the small side with only the exposed dredging dry reefs showing a small bit of shape twice in a couple of months and to get it right you have to be pretty well clued in on what's out there. Ferg has the right idea to quickly and rightly so head downunder to take apart a few roaring forties storms and knowing the Ferg he will score bringing back with him a big smile and shitloads of stories. So I was looking through some shots today and came across a couple of shots from 2 very memorable sessions we had last Autumn/Winter. The right rarely surfed and this was the first time that we know of it had been surfed at the time with Paul O'kane taking to it like a fish in water and the left is a ledging heaving beast of a wave when the swell gets huge, Mikee Hamilton comfortably home on a medium size day at one of his favourite playgrounds, Mullaghmore. Ah memories are sweet...roll on Autumn

Mr.Rejeb does it again

I love the stuff this guys does. The time and affort he must have to put into this would be painstaking, all for our viewing pleasure. Watch it all as it gets pretty insane at the end, i just don't know how he did the aerials.

2 weddings, some models, spring time & fresh meat

Been a while since my last ramblings but to be honest I'm working and the surf seems to be flat during the weekends so not alot to report. Althou my weekends have been busy with 2 weddings in scorching heat, well scorching for Ireland and me being a redhead didn't take to nicely to the big yellow fireball so alot of liquid was drunk to compensate, maybe too much... It's bloody amazing to see ya best mates getting married as it's one of a very few times in their's life when all the familys and friends from both sides get together and just have an awesome day, everyone is smiling, laughing and cheering plus a few crying, stories been told that would usually never come out. Cheers guys and gals for inviting me to your special day.
   Some random shots from my little Limux camera in the spring time as well, driving miles to these weddings on the black tarmac passing under static unimginative grey concrete structures everything seems lifeless but now and again amongst the concrete jungle we have created pops up a bit of colour from nature herself, so bright you just can not miss it, these only flower for about 4 weeks but the vast fields of them is pretty cool. Their's another random shot here where i parked the car on the main shopping street and when i returned a meat ruck was parked in front of me. It was a bit wierd as it was on a busy Saturday and loads of familys around with kids were freaking out, the guy was carrying these carcasses on his shoulder to the butcher with a real bloody pair of overalls on!
 Last but not least is a shot i took a while ago but it just reminds me of what is out there when the surf does come in. Don't be a sheep...go search as there's plenty out there

Suzanne & Joe

 Julie & Ronan

 

Me mate woke to this out his Hotel bedroom window the morning after the wedding!!

Back home going off

Raglan's one of the jewels of NZ with 4 sections to it, here's a video clip of it breaking only a couple of weeks ago, this is the inside section Manu bay...imagine what outside Indicators was doing 800m out further!!

A bloody good mate

  I had just woken up with a bit of a hangover after being on the beer with John, I dragged my sorry arse out of the stale air of the bedroom through the lounge and out onto the balcony of my 2nd floor apartment, the steel cold and damp under my feet, the air crisp, with every breath my vision came less blurred looking out beyond the green paddocks my eyes started to focus on a wave peeling off in the distance, clean and lined up. Turning me phone on my voicemail was prompting me, a message from John left at 4am, it went like this...”hahaha I'm pissing on your balcony”, John lives in the top apartment! Standing there listening to that it just dawned on me where exactly i was standing and it hadn't rained over night!
  A month or so later i had to move out of my apartment and used this as a favour and asked him if i could move in for a month or so while I find a new place to stay...4 years later i finally moved out! Over those 4 years i got to know John and he's one of the most genuine blokes you will ever meet, he tells it the way it is and has a joke for any situation. John will do anything he possibly can to help someone out and his knowledge of everything is astonishing. If you ever see him walking down the beach with his surfboard you'd swear he's a kook as John wears his legrope on his front foot which he reckons he's so used to it now it feels too weird to change it, but he is far from a kook, being surfing for a while John surfs pretty good and has some pretty big gonads and drive to find new spots and surf on his own, not because he wants to surf by himself thou it's because he kinda gets a bit over excited when driving to the surf and a passenger will
generally last just the once. Althou since getting married to his beautifull wife last year i do believe that he has calmed his driving down a bit.
   Anyways the reason for this is something i should've done a while back, a thank you for what you have done for me over the last few years, letting me stay without hesitation, making me laugh so hard that i got stomach cramps, the nights on the beer and showing me you can make your voice go squeaky when inhaling helium from a baloon through your nose hahaha, that was so frign funny, the wicked surfs we've had especially the session at Brandon bay and some of those gem of spots you have showed me.

Cheers john, you're a feckn legend

Joe had to cover one of John's eyes so he only saw 1 white ball...

Tim Bonython's "Sessions 2"

Well I have been waiting for this for a while and finally it's out. The insanely rediculace new movie "Sessions 2" is now available to buy at www.volatile.com . Check out the new trailer by clicking here . Some of the shit that's going down in the trailer alone is beyond belief. I am a big fan of Tim's and i know this dvd will not disappoint. I remember that first photo of The Box that came out in the late 1980's as this is probably where the first real heavy gnarly slab hunting in Oz was started, the first in my mind anyway, slab hunting has changed dramatically since the introduction of skis and this is where they find their home in big gnarly heavy stuff. The last 2 years have been off the frign scale and Sessions 2 looks to show it off big time, hats off to ya Tim and can hardly wait to get my copy. It certainly has inspired me

Image pulled from youtube footage from the new trailer of "Sessions 2". copyright Tim Bonython

surfing sheep

hahaha i just had to put this up

Wave porn

Right so, it's sunday morning and I can't sleep in. I just can't stay in bed & never have, I mean what's the point in lying there doing nothing so I decided to put a few shots up of a few empty waves. The first of which is kinda a funny story. I was in the pub back home with me mates the night before and I remember saying to them i'm only having a few jugs tonite as ******** is going to be filth in the morning, i'll pick yas up at 5am. Now this particular spot is not well known and is known to be very fickle so a crowd there is usually just us maybe 3 times a year. Well they all said it wasn't going to be great and were going to keep drinking. I left just before midnight and hit the hay, waking up I had butterflies and jumped in the trusty wagon and tore off to*********. It was still dark when I was putting the wetsuit on but i could hear it breaking, the wind was lite and offshore. I ended up taking this photo after surfing it by myself for 3 hrs, & yes that is marram grass, meaning lots of sand and one hell of a perfect long point break. By the time i got out of me wetsuit it had turned onshore then me mates turned up. Me still frothing at what i am saying is the longest rides i have ever had was telling the boys they missed it, of course they didn't believe me...until I got the photo developed. Most of the photos below are early morning & empty so why sleep in if you're missing it.

To shoot stills or video Aileens style

At heart my passion is surfing photography but i've always had it in the back of my mind to do some video as well & seeing some of the crazy videos coming out of Ireland recently has to inspire you to look seriously at it but this brings me to my problem, when you're always by yourself doing this sorta of thing do you stop shooting stills and do video for the day? If it's epic you might miss out on the photo of a life time in full res and the oportunity of getting me first cover. So a while back it got me thinking why not make a collar that'll fit on my big lense on my stills camera with a mount top and bottom so you can have the lense mounted on a tripod with a video camera mounted to the top of the lense...sure i've only got a limux compact but it records 720 HD and not too bad as well. So I set out with the idea in mind & gave it to my good mate Graham who took all the measurements and carved it out of 1 solid block of aluminium & did a cracking job I must say. I know i have put this in me blog before but this time i have the results. So it was at Aileens or is it Aileen's? Who cares, anyways it was at the cliffs of Moher earlier this year, below is the stills results and at the bottom is the video result which you're better off to go into youtube and view it in 720 HD, the video camera is mounted on top in the centre with a height adjuster to allow for the slightly different angle when you zoom in, works a bloody treat if you ask me.

Me collar

Click here to watch full screen