To photograph for the passion or for the money...

Photographers around the world have shown surfers what is out there through mates, mags and these days the net, expanding the imagination of the travelling surfer chasing that dream photo of Malibu, Cloudbreak, Teahupoo, Shipterns and so on. But what is it that drives us? For me it's not about the money, althou it is a bonus and the mags shouldn't get your hard work for free.

   I just love shooting waves and if I think I have a crackn photo I will send it in to the mags or up on me blog to give the surfer some recognition. But and it's a huge but, if a photo is of a surf spot that is still being explored, an unknown to many, a bit of a mystery, surfed only by a few, and when you look at it - it sorta makes it obvious where it is,  I would keep it to myself for memories and would not expose the place for the sake of a few notes to fatten my wallet. This is what tarnishes us photogs with a bad name at times. Just for a moment, imagine you have been surfing somewhere with a few mates for 10 years or so, then someone pops over the hill, takes a few snaps and next thing it's on the web in a matter of days. How would you feel knowing now the whole world knows about it. There are huge consequences in surf photography, you have to think about how it's going to effect everybody and everything by publishing certain photos.

   Yes I have had a lot of photos published. But the surf spots would have already been documented on the net or in mags and most people would  know about it, or shots of places that I have found, never been surfed. If you found a spot that no one had surfed and got your mates out there to explore it, by all means do what you want with the photos as it's your spot and no one can take that away from you. If there's a shot you have of someone in a barrel and all you can see is the wave that in my opinion is ok as well. I have a collection of shots on my hard drive no one has seen, and until I think I justify putting them out there, they will be staying locked up  But hey this is just my opinion, it's a free world and I am far too opinionated.

My dreams come true

Finally I managed to shoot Aileens from the water when it was barrelling, still smiling now and will be for a long time, big thanks to Pat the boat driver and everyone who made my day what it was

Follow your dreams

It's almost time

It most certainly has been a very rollercoaster ride for me the past week. I am now an unemployed bum, with finishing work at the end of last week you would think that i would be a happy chappy but the next day was a total freak out for me and it ended with me missing the swell of the summer in Clare. If I really wanted it I could've made it to Clare in time but my brain was just trying to juggle around what's about to happen in the months to come. Yes I am finally heading back to NZ for possibly good leaving behind the best bunch of people I have ever met, some bloody good mates in there, the last 6 years in particular have just blown me away with things I never thought I would see and to have the honor of photographing the rise of Irish big wave surfing and the people involved is a part of my life I will never forget. I truely believe the 100ft wave is possible here, it may be 10 years in the making but mark my words Ireland will break that boundary one day and I hope it's one of you guys. So why am I leaving? I have 2 nephews that don't know me and family that I have not seen in a long time, if they were living over here I wouldn't leave. So with all this rattling around in me noggin, i want to leave-no I don't want to leave-yes I do and so on I got a phone call from a guy I hadn't seen in years, Rory Martin rang to say he's opened a bar in New York called the "Blue Haven" and he wants some of my prints on his wall in big sizes, wow, that just blew me away and it really hit home that I was so lucky to be in Ireland doing what I did. Ontop of that Rory wanted me to sign them, it's a pleasure Rory and hopefully I'll be over at some stage to have a beer. I will keep shooting away where ever I get to and hopefully will have some stories to tell in the coming months. Anyway I hope to have a bit of a party before i leave so I will keep everyone posted with that, probably November I'd say
cheers

 Prints for Rory's bar the "Blue Haven"

Irish coast guard rescue exercise

I was coming back from the Aran islands and the coast guard rescue helicopter did an exercise on the back of the ferry, it was pretty cool to watch considering the ferry was still motoring along at i'm guessing around 20knots. Here's a short clip of it

 

Stills vs Motion

Here's the final result in "Stills vs Motion". Hopefully this will work, with a bit of luck we'll get some waves soon with a small bit of an onion out there forecasted in the next week in the mid atlantic it might be the start of the hurricane season. Now this contraption of mine wieghs in at 10 pounds! And the tripod another 7. I'm not sure if i'll be able to hold it all together on a boat but feck it i'll give it a go otherwise it will be a land based affair. Once again thanks to Graham who put my collar idea into reality, lucky it was carved out of a solid block of aluminium with the unexpected added wieght hahaha
so stay tuned in the next 5 months...

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