Raves & Rants . . from Penzance

F8 and Be There The phrase 'f8 and be there' is an old press photography adage explaining that the sure-fire way to get a great photo is to set your camera aperture to f8, and make sure you're in exactly the right place when that dramatic something happens!  Although 'f8 & be there' is a simplistic aphorism, a witty joke giving you only two parameters to get a great shot, those two central ideas can be used by photographers of all skill levels to achieve a good result.   For landscape photographers this means finding the right spot to set up your camera & tripod, at exactly the right time of day.  As you know, sunsets happen over the last half hour of the day, so you need to time your photo trip to be in place and ready for that half-hour.  An hour early and the scene is too bright, an hour later and you've missed all the fun.  Timing is key. As is being in the right spot. The luxury of planning where to be is something that press...

It was morning, and work timings had unusually left me free for a couple of hours. That would normally mean the surf was onshore, or blown out, or flat or something, adhering as it usually does to the First Law of Surfing . But not today. Blue Rinse Today looked like a bleak, grey, midwinter day with (from a brief glimpse of the sea on the school run) a weak looking swell and the wind threatening to go onshore. But I had time. Time to take pictures. So I trawled along the coast looking for surf or seascape images, but found very little. Until I came to the reef. Which, oddly, seemed to be firing. Fryer  Several locals and some of the Aggy crew were making the most of a small day before the expected 'Hercules II' storm at the weekend. An acceptable peak Empty Dan Joel Mole getting critical Captain Fryer on a set wave A chill wind cut through the grey pall that hung over the break, warmed slightly by the relaxed atmosphere. Styling ...

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...

Dear Reader As ever, it has been a long time since I last typed words into the ether, however this time I have a proper excuse. A right royal one, even.  Earlier in the year I took a call about photographing some people who would be visiting the area later in the year. 'Would love to,'  I said, 'Who are they?' 'Umm, we can't say at the moment', the caller replied. We talked some more and then, even having sworn me to secrecy, they would still only give away that 'They are an eminent, high profile and newsworthy couple'.  As it turned out, the eminent personages were none other than HRH The Queen and Prince Philip. Unfortunately, the date they were coming conflicted with a date I already had booked on a ferry for a two week surf trip/photo shoot to France. Should I blow out the trip and get an HRH portrait or two in my portfolio - by Royal Appointment?  What a quandary - photograph the Queen or go on a surf trip?  What would you do? 'Can...

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...

Some sunset shutter clicks, from a certain place that never works at this state of tide . . . . . A blurry evening Sir Jack of Johns JJ standing tall Sir Sam of Boex  Return to Ocean-Image.com

Hope you had a memorable festive season, and 2011 has many open doors for you.  I'll be continuing to do that thing that photographers do, including swimming around whenever there's some decent surf. Mike hard at work shooting in his studio This pic is courtesy of  the long lens of Photographer and Photoshop Master  Geoff Tydeman , a long time contributor of top quality imagery to the surf media.  Thanks are also due to Geoff for showing me the light in one of my photographs recently. Happy New Year. Mike Return to Ocean-Image.com