Raves & Rants . . from Penzance

Someone must have put something in the tea because it's been a very productive month at Ocean-Image towers, and consequently sees the release of three new products. Firstly, the new 2013 Waves desk calendar, which sits in its own fold-out display case, simply change to a fresh image each month. This year again it is in aid of clean seas charity Surfers Against Sewage . A healthy donation from the sale of each calendar will go towards monitoring and challenging the polluters of one of our greatest natural assets.  Due out at the end of this week,  you can pre-order yours here already. Secondly, as mentioned on my Facebook , while drinking a cup of tea and listening to one of those brilliant Cornish storms rage outside, a punny idea came into my head, heralding the creation of ..  'A Storm in a Teacup' OK, OK, so it's a mug, but 'Storm in Tea Mug' didn't quite work. Using this Sennen Storm photo printed onto a solid white ...

So here's the rub:  Imagine it's  the weekend and you go for a game of football at your local park with a few mates. Other people are spread around the park playing in similar games with varying skill and intensity. A usual Saturday or Sunday morning, the vibe is good whatever the weather. Now imagine that every time it rained, the whole park, including the football pitch you normally play on, got covered with a mix of rainwater and raw sewage.  How long would the water company responsible be allowed to pollute a public space in this way?  And how big the fines for allowing it to happen even once ? And yet every time it rains fairly heavily, this is what is happening at some surf breaks.  After heavy or prolonged rain, raw sewage is discharged into the river at Gwithian, immediately finding its way into the sea and spreading along the near shore surf zone - the surfer's football pitch if you will - where hundreds of surfers, swimmers and other water users ar...

A relative emails to remind me of a promise made in a previous blog , and asks me how the training has gone. Well the training has been and gone, as indeed has the Yacht Inn Swim itself, delayed two weeks by yet another summer storm. Start Line I started training for the swim back in March or April where I was unpleasantly surprised to find myself breathless and tired after only 10 lengths (250 metres) of the local pool. This despite having built up over 20 years of surfing muscles. With some trepidation I contemplated the 1300 metres of the Yacht Swim,  from Newlyn to Penzance alongside the Promenade. A pool membership plus five months of stroke correction, style correction, searching for non-leaking goggles that actually fit my odd shaped face, bilateral breathing correction, sea swims across Perranuthnoe beach, from Gwynver beac h to Aire point, random beaches up in Wales, even inside Penzance Harbour during storms, and my vastly improved and confident swimming ...

 Feeling a bit like a Spin Doctor with this little panorama taken during some seemingly unseasonal sun today at St Michael's Mount, Marazion.  Click and drag and go for a spin ! Try the Full Screen button for a better effect.  Reminiscent of one of Damien Hirst's spin paintings, huh? No? No, you're right, it's not. Return to Ocean-Image.com

When you get into trouble on the Cornish coast, these are some of the people that will come and find you, no matter what the weather. Most RNLI personnel are volunteers, so the idea was to also show their other jobs. In the case of Commander Chris Channing though, he is full time at Culdrose  Butcher and Coastguard All shot for a Cornwall Today article about the new Search &Rescue exhibition at the National Maritime Museum , Falmouth. Return to Ocean-Image.com

Yes, I admit it, I have indeed been shooting babies.  Underwater, even.  The water housing, camera and I have been sitting on the bottom of various swimming pools as part of a project with the good people at Baby Aquatics , while a stream of brave little nippers are skilfully put through their sub-aqua paces. While at first it might sound outrageous to plunge your darling 3 month old beneath the water, in fact the babies retain a reflex action to close the epiglottis, and are completely safe and happy beneath the surface. There are a lot of technical challenges in getting these photos - including avoiding the legs and arms of the trained baby diving professionals and watchful parents when photographing underwater, while at the same time avoiding getting the same objects into the shots before the child is safely whisked back into the parental arms.  Subsequently coping with the underwater blue shift in the colour of the light and removing extraneous arms and le...

Well, it's been a long time, hasn't it? I'm not feeling contrite though, as I believe that anyone not blogging/facebooking/twittering etc etc is someone who actually has a real life, in the real world, and simply hasn't spent the last three months sat in front of a computer. What on earth did we all do before computers and the internet.  Luckily everything has been speeded up so much and attention times are so short that most people will have forgotten what the start of this sentence was about.  I know I have. So...oooo, what have you been up to? Do tell! Write a comment and let me know. As for me, I've been, um out shooting waves and the myriad storms that seem to be peppering our spring, the attendant lashings of rain making a mockery of the recently imposed drought orders. A guy called Smiler, kite surfing a decent one in Cornwall Penzance, Cornwall storm There has been some work going on too, including this shoot for Cornwall Today of smock-tas...

It's come to my attention that my physical body is perhaps not as happy to go surfing as it once was. While the elation of riding virtually any size or sort of wave remains undiminished since I first stumbled to my feet on a dented and waterlogged old board at Sennen more than twenty years ago, the increasing occurrence, and current list, of minor bodily injuries has managed to break through my imagined youthfulness and inform me of it's ailments.  Since this is usually via the conduit of pain, it has been difficult to ignore. Some of these ailments could be said to be partially self-inflicted - the groin injury occasioned by an upturned fin during a wipe-out, a bloody nose inflicted by someone bailing their board after dropping in on me. Tight hamstrings are a fact of life for surfers, but add the current twinge of Sciatica, a cricked neck that six months of exercises has failed to heal and a twisted knee caused by the above drop in, and you'll start to get the same mes...

Click to watch video Haunting music and beautiful footage of massive waves and riders at Teahupoo in Tahiti.  Shot on  £100,000 worth of video camera called 'The Phantom' during the Billabong Pro last year, the camera was designed for ultra-high speed capture to be played back in slow motion. This high quality  imagery really gives you an idea of what big wave riders are taking on. More Surfing Videos It also makes the waves look stunning. Amazing work by Chris Bryan www.chrisbryanfilms.com

Has anyone seen Newquay surfer Oliver Doy? He is missing and his friends and family are worried about him. Please call 101 and quote log number 572 of the 7th of January. This is not a joke, serious help only please. (from the local police)...   Oliver Doy - missing since 7th Jan  Please contact the police if you have any information. 

Click for more photos...  Happy New Year to the blogosphere, here's hoping 2012 will bring lots of interesting photo commissions, surf and storms.  Before all that though, here's a quick glance back to the Christmas Day swim at Sennen.  The only shot I got was this one from the road leading down to the Cove because we were stuck in a traffic jam.  Normally this time of year Sennen lacks only tumbleweeds for the classic 'deserted town' feel.  Christmas Day saw the car park overflowing, and the road across the front lined both sides with seemingly abandoned vehicles.   Several hundred people made the 'swim' ( more exactly a screaming, lemming-like plunge up to the knees followed by hours of shivering) with several hundred more encouraging them on with their madness. Sennen on Christmas Day  The swell was good enough to tempt a few surfers in too.  So what's new for the New Year, I hear myself ask ? Some interesting portrait jobs coming...