Raves & Rants . . from Penzance

Luckily, summer arrived this year, immediately stymieing the 'It's so grey and rainy and cold' critics. Of course, up to this point, no one was quite sure if summer would put in an appearance, but as you know, we got hit by a heatwave. And no sooner did it arrive than the critics cry changed to 'It's too hot and muggy, bring back the grey'. During the heatwave I was at home, stuck in front of the computer, editing video footage from a two week surf trip to France . Apart from when I was out making more video of things in another hot zone - of which more in a later post. The video footage, the two week stuff, consisted of nearly 100Gb of clips and stills, totalled nearly 10,000 files, and has taken (alongside PR, press and editorial work) the last three months to condense into a 45 minute promo film.  Sifting stills, naming clips, timing them to music and the myriad finer points of tweaking footage into a narrative is massive multi-tasking job for someone mor...

There's such a lot of imagery and video coming out of Teahupoo, the massively challenging reef break in Tahiti, that I thought I'd keep adding things below as I find them. This is the biggest swell to show up since the Code Red swell of 2011, and the world's elite/ craziest big wave surfers have shown up to the Code Red II party. SurfLine's Fantastic crop of photos Wave of the Day Yesterday:   Mark Healy, pic by Ted Grambeau Raimana, pic by Shane Dorian Koa Rothman, pic by More photos from yesterday here: Teahupoo Photos In the video below you can see the green bottom of a boat getting caught out and flipped over the falls on the inside. Hopefully no injuries, but that would have been a nasty wipeout. Tomorrow is supposed to be even bigger, keep an eye on the Teahupoo Live Cam More photos of the scene here:  Teahupoo Code Red

Unsurprisingly, the Canary Isles are mostly dry and sun-drenched, set, as they are, on a similar latitude to the Sahara Desert. And perhaps a perfect holiday destination for a surfing Brit since their location just off the coast of Africa attracts all north Atlantic swells. As a soubriquet 'The Hawaii of Europe' is thus well earned, though these volcanic islands are less lush than their Pacific brethren, having had their last eruption a mere 300 years ago.  From a choice of seven larger islands - Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro, long time surf buddy Clyde and I picked the easternmost island, Lanzarote, which, I was told, had been an entirely dry and perfectly sun-drenched destination for the past two years.  Until, of course, the day we touched down under dark storm clouds and pouring rain.  Mind you, we had landed in Fuerteventura. For a run down of the following seven complex, misery inducing, lost surf opportunity h...

Alas, words elude me, and seem to have done so for a couple of months.  In fact over this time words have been escaping from me but only as speech rather than as written or typed examples of the form.  At one point during the recent festivities they started escaping from me in song form at the same time as a catchy tune, which I'd rather taken a fancy to, came on the pub jukebox.   My pleasure in voicing the words was immediately arrested by my companions with their use of other words like 'off-key' or 'tone deaf' and even 'droning'.  Harsh, cutting, not to say painful orismology , I was forced to shout 'Them's hurtin' words!' at the undeniable truth. Perhaps not floods of words, but certainly floods of water have been the order of many days, and nights though, with last year being the second wettest on record for the UK, though apparently not for Cornwall. Some of my photos got published when floods hit Newlyn recently. I did a lot o...

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 ...

Well, it's been a while since I posted here!  The reason, well, one of the reasons, being arranging some photos for this show, which will go up next week. Inviting you to the show There will be photos by John Knee, whose abstract photographs should match the colourful canvas paintings of Anthony Frost, plus some seascapes and waves by yours truly.  Glass of wine if you come on Friday 10th for the view! Hopefully see you there. Return to Ocean-Image.com