Local Color
Sometimes the journey is the destination, taken down the way from La Lancha’s trash-strewn parking lot.
Archive for April, 2008
Blowout Bummer
Went searchin’, today, for any pre-cursors of the incoming swell. There’s definitely a lot of chop and the bay is looking super worked from all the air. But no real swell and any uptick is blown out in the massive wind. Conversely, the kiteboarders are having a field day. All along the beach in bucerias day-glow parachutes whiz above the tree tops.
Propiedad Privada
I tried to stop in at Pools/Albercas, one of my favorite breaks - that only works with the summer storm systems, to check the access situation (there’s been rumors) and much to my dismay, there is a new security gate that denied me access to the road that passes near the break. I was under the impression that A. The road is built on top of a river bed, what would be designated as “Federal Zone” (hence illegal to put in a gate or deny access without laborious and costly, federal permits - which I highly doubt they have) and B. The road itself was not deeded property of the condominium association that owns the Punta Del Burro property, so it would be illegal for the association to deny access to the road. We’ll have to do some due diligence.
This gets to the heart of a serious problem happening all up and down the coast between La Cruz and Punta Mita and one that I’ve been reticent to write about. Access to our handful of surf breaks is slowly being choked off one by one, as is the access to each of the local swimming beaches. People point fingers and say that it’s the Gringos, but I don’t think it’s that simple.
The past four years has seen an explosion of land development along this coast. Land exchanged hands, plans drawn up, permits filed and now building is starting to happen everywhere. Relatively rapidly, access to sacred surf breaks are being choked off by developers and homeowners associations, who don’t want people accessing the beaches from what usually amounts to lot boundary lines and semi-dry riverbeds.
This is a heavy and laborious subject and requires more than a simple post, so I guess I’m committing myself to a series of posts that will in all likeliness just graze the surface of the unintended problems real estate development is creating, in the bay.
For now, I’ll point you to Vida Cadu Cada, the blog of a recently enacted local civil association whose raison d’etre is to work with local, state and national authorities to secure access for surfers to these sites. I’ve kinda signed on, to help with the english speaking contingent.
Ana and the kitty
Why? cuz kitties are cute. that’s why. that and the fact that Ana can surf a short board better than you. She shreads! Put gnarly surf chicks together with kitties and it’s photo gold, my friend. works every time.
Bookmarks for April 29th
- Miley Cyrus Bare In Vanity Fair: Tells Fans She's "Embarrassed"
ok, let’s all agree that this miley cyrus / vanity fair / annie lebowitz business is utter horse shit. Annie shoulda told Disney go fly a fucking kite. America is so puritanical, it’s scary. there’s absolutely nothing sexually suggestive about that image - Ron English "Popaganda" | Juxtapoz online
"I wanna be erected" John McCain Viagra billboard in LA. total classic - Champions | remembering the new world order | a Mato Atom Film
wicked awesome slow-mo video of Bush + Blair playing soccer. with bullets. amazing motion graphics style. looks like it was put together in after-effects. - Holy Crap! Pepper // Peppermill // Mint: A Fresh Look at your Site
now this is a cool mint pepper. emails you when it detects that your site has been linked to from a heavy traffic site like Digg, Daring Fireball, Slashdot etc… nice. - Peeks at Mexico | great expat blog on living in mexico
no rose-colored glasses. Michael's blog is the real deal. If I wrote strictly about my experiences living in mexico, they'd often sound like his. writing about it requires too much focus on the negative, i'm glad michael is holding it down.
Not Quite Ripe
With impending swell on the way, I went for an 8:30am checkup. not too early to catch the morning session (and accompanying traffic jam of earth moving vehicles, buses and pick up trucks stacked to the gills with albañiles - all on their way out to Punta Mita to make luxury houses for the richie riches). and not too late, before the rays start to bake you alive and the wind whips the water into a blown-out, frothish frenzy.
Assuming there’d be at least some kind of swell, I over-shot and brought the shortboard. Rolled up to “the spot” to find 16 longboarders with occasional two to three footers. With nice, glassy conditions there were some nice waves coming through, an uptick from last week, but nothing chewable for a 6′0″. I surveyed the scene for a while. Some longboarder chick was rockin’ it, inna fine style. Amazing leg work, subtle and steady. Just as a I grabbed the camera, she headed back to shore.
Back to the break at 6:00pm with the wind whipping everything into fine white foam. This time the 6′0″ worked nicely on the slightly larger set waves, but with no real power in ‘em, they’re what I’d call “lazy”. I still had fun and being back out the shortboard was a nice change from the waterlog, good paddle practice for any incoming swell and nice to work out those shortboard legs.
Repairing + Preparing
Last week was spent trimming ankle slappers. But sometimes you just need a taste. Not a local to be seen in the water. A ghost town populated by visiting surf families with multiple surf instructors.
Survey sez: major swell approaching. Depending on who you ask, it’ll arrive here Wed or Fri, I’m betting on Wednesday. Spent this weekend repairing mis cuatro tablas. Each board with varying degrees of dings, bruises and gashes. The fish had a nice run in with a visiting mini super grom whose soccer dad was video taping him, as I ducked the wrong way and his skagg put a nice 6 inch gash into my rail. The super-light ATL 6′0″ had a nice little nose ding, with foam showing, probably from out-of-the-water damage. and the longboard had a year’s worth of gouges and scrapes, it ain’t called the “waterlog” for nothin’. I ran out of catalyst along the way, so funboard repairs are left til next round (the learning board). I’ll have to restock up next time I head to the states. Finding ding repair kits in Mexico is not easy, you can thank homeland security for that one. We guard our kits, here, like our first born.
More pics on the flickrtrim.
Bookmarks for April 27th
- Christian Patterson - Sound Affects
a new photo book by Christian Patterson. Patterson has posted a video of his hand flipping through his book with an awesome funk track, i love the dirty grown at 45 secs. interesting way to tease your book. i'm taking notes. - Sleevefacing on Flickr
latest and great flickrnomenon. I'm rummaging through my record collection as we speak. - The Year in Pictures: Weekend Video
delightful break from the youtube norm. an apt spring-related video. nothing says spring like baby ducks flinging themselves out the nest and Richard Attenborough. - GetShust | tumblelog of Dan Shust
great posts. tech heavy. on the ball. subscribe to rss - Al Gore, John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins raising green growth fund
to invest in late stage clean energy companies. fund will possibly be as large as $400 mil.
Bookmarks for April 26th
- Speartalks: Aaron Rose - Josh Spear
great interview with Aaron Rose, former Alleged Gallery owner and "Beautiful Losers" curator / book author / director. He talks about the new Beautiful Losers documentary. This guy is just as creative as the people whose work he's championed. - Martin + Osa - Shop By Outfit
pretty interesting use of flash video to show different outfits and how they look in motion. great site design too. already great web design for a retailer. H&M / Gap / Inditex should be seriously paying attention to this. - History lesson.
the best blog post i've read all day. If you always wondered where our weird customs and sayings come from, this post is for you. terms discussed: "chew the fat", "thresh hold", "raining cats n dogs", why we hold "wakes", why tomatos were considered poiso - File this under: who knew? | Thrasher Funds. a skate/surf/snow mutual fund
securities investment firm trading under the "Thrasher" moniker and they trade primarily based on what they call the "Demographic Convergence Thesis" that seeks to capitalize on all things surf/skate/snow culture related. - How To: DIY Leatherman Compact Keychain
the best keychain ever? [via stevey] - SEAHUGGERS | Eco-Friendly and Green Surfboards, Apparel, Gear and Accessories
wow these guys rock! the name alone says it all. - pixpeep - Cross-Processing In Aperture (Musings)
awesome detailed and well written tutorial on achieving xprocess looks in Aperture. very handy and the article teaches you have to use Aperture's quarter-tone functions in the Levels brick. - Athletics NYC
gorgeous art-direction and web design. so simple layout and web-based typography. very tight
I ♥ Small Waves
The past week has been dead, dead, dead. Undeterred, I’ve been slogging my 9-oh log jammy out to various spots. One foot, two foot, three foot. It doesn’t take much to have fun. I’ve been relishing in the small wave action. Maybe not the longest sessions on earth, but perfect for grabbing a few nice rides, heading back to familiar shores and snapping off a few captures in the late afternoon gold.
If it doesn’t pick up soon, a trip to La Michoacan may be in the near future.
It’s getting hot, folks. I mean like, hot hot. Summer is on the way and sitting out on the water for 2 hours, mid-day/afternoon just isn’t so smart. So I’m going to start conditioning myself for the dawn patrol. not necessarily to fight the crowds, rather to fight the heat (and the burn).
It’s All Good | Boogie
On a recent trip back to the homeland (NYC), my sister Mosbef hooked me up with It’s All Good by a syrbian photographer living in New York, that goes by the name Boogie. The book is published by powerHouse:
A gritty, graphic, and gripping exposé of the underworld and its inhabitants, It’s All Good, the first monograph by Boogie, presents the predators and the prey in the drug game today. Shot in New York City’s most notorious neighborhoods—Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Queensbridge—Boogie gained intimate access into a world few dare to venture, a world closed to outsiders, a world of crackheads, junkies, and gangsters. From the cops patrolling the project roofs to the addicts overdosing on the streets, It’s All Good chronicles ghetto life in stark, heart-stopping images and intense testimonials. Boogie brings us to a place few will leave and most will stay, a place where escape is one rock, one shot, one glock away.
The photos are intensely candid and close-up. The people being photographed know and confide in the photographer and you can see it in every image. Boogie spent a lot of time getting to know these people and gaining their trust. The book is really powerful and grim.
In photography books / monographs, the images always stand on their own. In the truest sense, the story is told through the images. Text and image don’t often collide. It’s all about the images and most of the time, rightly so.
In ‘It’s All Good’ the images appear one to a page, with an introductory text to each of the characters every few pages. In the back of the book, there is a glossary of images, each one with a comment, from the photographer, on the person being photographed or context that the photo was taken in.
I really enjoyed Boogie’s comments and although the book kinda takes the middle road (by displaying the images by themselves and then including the glossary), I gotta say that I spent a lot of time in the glossary section looking at the thumbnail images and reading the comments. The full size images are gorgeous and raw, but the comments really open the story up and provide the details and context that the photos sit in. I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t just include the text with the photos.
There’s definitely a conversation there, about the role of the image, versus the roll of image and text together. And the intention of the publisher/author to present the images versus the intent of the viewer to understand the context of the images. I’m not sure if my “art discourse” hat is fully on today, so I’ll leave it at that.
Toward The Great Expanse
Art by Ty Williams (L) and Julie Goldstein (R)
Montanaro Gallery in Newport Rhode Island, is having an art exhibition called Toward The Great Expanse that features the surf/water inspired work of Ty Williams and Julie Goldstein. The pieces are beautiful.
The Montanaro Gallery site has what looks like all of the pieces from the show, up on the site, in nice big jpegs. Very thoughtful of them, for us left-and-down-coasters. the name of the show couldn’t be more perfect for the flavor of art.
[via Foam]
Foam Re-Design | Vincent Skeltis
A American Family Man: Re-Design: A Reader Poll
Vincent Skeltis was asked, informally, to re-design Foam (a surfing mag for girls). Skeltis has posted the brief, current/projected readers, the latest cover and a few of the covers from his re-design process. He’s asking people to comment on what he’s done so far (with the disclaimer that the logo is still very rough). Skeltis is letting us all in on his process, which is awesome. It can also be a double-edged sword, so in that sense he’s being very brave (and silently hoping no one skewers him, anonymously, in the comments).
Skeltis has some amazing photography and art-direction over at his portfolio site. I’m sure that whatever designs he ends up presenting, regardless of how they’re eventually implented (or not), his art-direction will be top-notch.
[via APE]
–
Update: It seems that Foam had Skeltis pull down the blog entry. understandable. well, I guess i’ll leave this up for posterity sake.
All Colors Together
The Year in Pictures hips us to these awesome posters created by Brazilian graphic designer Daniel Molin. The Google Machine™ has never heard of Molin (unless he’s the same guy creating massive amounts of sci-fi fantasy art - which i doubt). That’s a shame. Regardless of your political leanings, these are beautiful pieces of design.
Simplicity works so well.
Zoo York Artist Series
I’m really diggin’ on Zoo York’s new artist series boards done by Mark and Matt Owens (Matt of VolumeOne fame). The art-direction is pure 70s NY mashup. Equal parts Massimo Vignelli, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand and Lance Weyman mixed with a slight case of Monty Python. Great designs! Having grown up in NY in the 70s-80s my childhood is filled with the kind of iconography that this is derived from. Athletics. has the lickable larger versions.
btw - nice Athletics site, right?! talk about clean and beautiful layout and typography. gorgeous stuff. i’m taking notes. Athletics is Matt and Mark Owen, Samia Saleem, James Ellis, Jason Gnewikow, David Ahuja and Wes Duvall. wow, very cool.
Bookmarks for April 24th
- YouTube - How Hillary Can Still Win
haha! awesome video. Hillary Clinton's campaign isn't just making history, it *is* history - OneLessDesk? :: Heckler Design
perhaps the coolest desk i've ever seen. a lil expensive, but the design is so bad-ass. love the computer cable hidingness. [via joshspear.com] - Hotel Habita in Mexico City gets a makeover
Hotel Habita is part of the Design Hotel collection, it's faces tot he street are pure glass, recently a team of artists covered the entire hotel surface in black and white graffiti, as a commissioned art piece. very cool, but I don't know if it'd make me wanna stay there - Barry McGee on VBS.TV
Barry McGee has a 2 part series on VBS.tv. with Aaron Rose. They actually gave McGee the interview and he created animated characters for it. it's an art piece abut an interview about an artist. meta cool. - Investing your money in Gold and Silver
killer video. essential in understanding how the US dollar is worth less and less.
Where Has All The Plastic Gone?
I’ve been meaning to link to this for awhile, but since it’s Earth Day, there’s no better time than the now (not now, but right now). My dad has a wicked photographic essay called Where Has All The Plastic Gone? The photographs feature trash found at the beach here in Mexico. Trash is a common sight on the beaches and along the roads, so much so that it begins to become invisible to the people that live here. The essay feels like a visual archaelogical survey, recorded for whoever might inhabit earth, long after we’re gone and all that’s left are bits of oddly shaped, brightly colored plastic.
flickr set | fullscreen slideshow
On a similar tangent: there’s been an awful lot of talk about plastic building up in the environment and being around forever. My hope is that long after we’re gone (assumably the plastic by-products killed us off), maybe there’s some kind of bacteria that somehow evolves or makes it to earth aboard some large meteor and uses the plastic (and toxic chemicals it amasses), as a food source. Similar to the way bacteria feed off the toxic chemicals emitted from deep-ocean vents. The dinosaurs gave us oil to drive our vehicles, maybe our gift to future inhabitants is, well, food. Or more likely we’ll just decompose and become oil for future inhabitants’ automobile equivalents.
Just a thought.
Bookmarks for April 21st
- Thalia Surf Shop | Leguna Beach CA
these guys carry some wicked boards. i have total board lust. they're all ridable art and top notch boards by The Campbell Brothers Surfboards, Gato Heroi, Mandala, Rainbow Surfboards, Rich Pavel, Malcom Campbell, Michel Junod, The Swift Movement. - The Death of Environmentalism - Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World
a long-format pdf. 37 pages. I haven't read it yet, but I'm interested to see what all the hoopla is about. apparently these guys are hated by the established environmental er um, establishment. - Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival promo
brilliant promo video. a meditation on the finer points of having a mustache re: latin america's storied infatuation with upper-lip hair. hilarious and slightly creepy. the ending is genius. - Vice Magazine | The Breakthrough Institute Wrests Environmentalism Away from the Dumbs - by Thomas Morton
Vice correspondent Thomas Morton interviews "Break Through" authors Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, about how to change the environmental movement to reflect current realities. basically they say that traditional (read: neo-hippy) environmental ap - My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) …by Michael Moore
Michael Moore chimes in Hillary's awful campaigning tactics. and goes to Obama's side - Shine | Yahoo!
shine uses the YUI ImageLoader, inspiration for LazyLoader Plugin. watch how the iamges load when you scroll. this is gonna be huge for the blog format, which really breaks down, when it comes to t - Lazy Load Plugin for jQuery
absolutely ingenious tool for loading images above the fold first, and loading below the fold images on an "as needed" basis. the opposite of preloading images, for web pages with heavy image content. really useful jscript. apple is using this, yahoo's sh - YouTube - Re: Barack Obama in Raleigh, NC
Obama brushed them shoulders off. hilarious yet classy. - PASCUALES Y PUERTO ESCONDIDO | Vidascaducada?s
great short clips of big wave surfing at Pacuales and Puerto. awesome footage. Pascuales looks super gnarly - 8106 | QUIERO CLUB: SHOWTIME
i'm digging on "Quiero Club" a nu-rave band from Monterrey Mexico. awesome song. I love the hand-drawn typography steez on the image.
Punta Mita
Photos from an afternoon excursion up to Punta Mita. waves were knee-high to a grasshopper, but this thirty-something buck managed to grab a nice long ride or two. I had a great conversation with Joe Doggett and his buddies, a rag tag crew of inveterate surf junkies who make an annual pilgrimage to Mita. They completely schooled me on Punta Mita surf history and for that I am grateful. You can look forward to a post on Punta Mita surf lore in the not to distant future. Thanks Joe!
Toxic: Garbage Island
VBS.TV has a new 12 part series called Toxic: Garbage Island, a long-form (for web standards anyway) documentary on the North Pacific Garbage Patch.
I’ve posted about floating garbage island before and i’m sure if you ask any politician, they’d say it’s an urban myth hyped by Boing! Boing! conspiracy theorists. But it’s not! The folks at Vice sent a crew of people with video cameras out to the patch. Their verdict? Not only are the reports true, but it’s worse than they expected. There’s no patch and no island. Nothing that can be cleaned up easily. It’s a galactic mess of floating pieces slowly photodegrading into even tinier toxic, digestible pieces. everywhere and nowhere. a gigantic floating toxic stew. and it’s twice the size of Texas.
Stevey originally turned me on to the series a few weeks ago and I’ve been meaning to repost. With Earth Day tomorrow (Apr22), I thought I put the word out. The documentary is intense, horrifying and urgent. Special props to the Vice team for such engaging content. When watching it, you get the feeling that they didn’t quite know what they were getting in to and the narrator/host Thomas Morton keeps it interesting with an increasing use of curse words as they get further in to the garbage patch. Justifiable considering the horror show they encounter.
Relatedly: Check out this interview, Thomas Morton’s take on traditional (read: neo-hippy) environmentalism as he interviews the authors of Break Through, a book that calls for the “Death of Environmentalism” (or at least its current 60s era mentality). Morton can be a bit harsh and irreverent, but he makes some valid points.
Bookmarks for April 20th
- whats the jackanory ?: An answer to a question ?
Andrew Hetherington on Terry Richardson's shooting style. Terry only uses consumer point-n-shoot film cameras the Contax G2 and Yashica T5 (well, most of the time), great read. - SuperTouch | visual culture blog
i just happened upon Super Touch. killer street art blog. started by jamie O'Shea formerly of Juxtapoz. tons of editors, tons of content. lots of nice posts on artists i haven't seen posted in other places. very hip. rss reader worthy. - A Photo Editor - Single Most Annoying Web 2.0 Feature For Photographers
an interesting post on photographers that use unique ids in email send-outs to track photo editors viewing their sites. an ok technique, but when you use it as "come on" line when contacted said editor, that is *creepy*. the post's comments end up in tast - Surfy Surfy: Single Fins!
i find myself spending increasingly more time casing Surfy Surfy and Moonlight Glassing. i have severe board-lust. this is a link to some modern single fins. looking really appetizing. - Google News | loathing ABC News' handling of the debates
further proof that ABC News' questions were fucking awful. straight out of Karl "turd blossom" Rove's talking points play book. These guys should be demoted if not fired. jerk wads. - Obsidian Wings: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Slight Return)
if they were held in 2008 and moderatored by the jerk-offs from ABC News: Charlie Gibson and George "my dumb questions totally have merit" Stephanopoulos. - Found Footage: Tips for Dating an Apple Coder
from Mahalo Daily. this can be applied to dating graphic designers, coders, photogs. anyone who sits in front of computer for rediculously too long periods of time.
The City Loves You
I was grubbing through my mint stats when I happened up on The City Loves You, a multi-editor spanish/english-language blog about the street art scenes and its intersections with gallery, fashion, music and commercial art with an emphasis on mexico-based artists and international collaboration projects. Each editor essentially has their own blog sections in the City Hotel section, with all entries appearing on the front page. Editors cover their home town scenes from all over Mexico. I’m particularly interested in the Guadalajara section, as I travel to the GDL frequently and I’m always keeping my ear out for good art/music shows.
It’s nice to see a highly visible blog-style website dedicated to street culture in Mexico. I haven’t come across very many information resources that are as accessible and consistently updated. If you wanna know what’s happening in Mexico’s street art scene give The City Loves You a look.
Old Guy Alley
Anclote, Punta Mita. also known as the “Mexican Malibu” for its long, mellow, soft shouldered wave. A longboarder paradise. The destination of choice for old guys who are following Mexico’s gold road of fabled surfing spots. It’s a welcome change of pace from the local grom stables of Burros and Sayulita. Lulls in the sets are filled with surf mythology laden stories of yore and each wave is an opportunity to share a ride with an old friend or new.
Twitter / edfladung
Using Twitter? Friend me up!
Apparently, Twitter is really starting to take off. I’ve been on it for about 6 months now, yapping away in to the twitter void. It’s got a tech heavy following, but over the past month or so, Twitter has really started to take off with the non-tech folks. Twitter can be many different things to many different people, which is why it’s so cool. I use Twitter in a few different ways:
- Throw-away blogging, it’s for the kind of things you don’t want laying around on your blog, archived for posterity sake, and picking up negative comments years later (example)
- It’s the best way to have any question imaginable answered promptly
- Kinda like a passive IM chat room or IRC channel, where you get to pick who’s messages you get to listen in on
Twitter is pretty bad ass and I just thought I’d put a post out there (mostly for the benefit of you rss headz). Friend me up, if you’re a twitterer.
Bookmarks for April 18th
- Re:vision Camera Cuffs
recycled jewelery for photographers. actually some nice pieces, i'll take the DoF one. $180 though. too steep for this fashion conscious rural mexico dweller. killer header graphic/logo on their website. [via Cool Hunting] - YouTube - REDNECK ART made with BBQ Rib sauce
amazing. and dude is damn talented. [via LOA] - YouTube - Stupid Internal Microsoft Vista SP1 Video
the new rickroll destination. hilarious video. this can't be real. it's gotta be like an extended Saturday Night Live skit or something. - Geoff McFetridge at SAM Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle
photos from Geoff's new exhibit in Seattle. Geoff is on fire. this show looks super dope and will stay up for an entire year. [via monoscope] - Yale Daily News - For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse
"Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriag - Architecture and fashion | guardian.co.uk
The Guardian UK has a slideshow of 9 architects and their fashion sense. great slideshow. Libeskin gets a thumbs down. I like Mike Davies' all red thing and Zaha Hadid dresses like her sculptures.
Field Notes
Roberto + Barbara - two kids that own a local Bucerias surf shop
Call me a noob, but I had no idea you could still custom order boards from Gerry Lopez. I was in the water yesterday, talking to Lobo and that’s exactly what he did. He’s riding a sweet 7′6″ Cheetah with a serene light blue-green tint. super tight.
We spent last weekend in Quintana Roo and came back to stories of people seeing sharks at La Lancha on Saturday. Whoa.
We’re jumping straight from winter in to summer. The water has warmed at least 3 degrees (c) in the past 2 weeks. No need for full wetsuit anymore and all of the accumulated seaweed is dying in vast groves and washing up on the beaches. gonna start smelling real nice in a week or so.
Rode the 9′0″ San Miguel, yesterday, and I can’t seem to get up to the nose. but did grab a head high peeler. very fast and about 2 feet back from the nose, both feet pointed forward. Still got the ropey hands over the head steez though. can’t keep the hands from going up.
I get tons of great ideas, floating out there looking at the horizon, the problem is that I forget all those good ideas, the minute I sit back in front of this computer. It’s a problem.
I hit a small deer last night on the way home. She jumped out ran along with the car for a split second and then collided with my fog light. she bounced off and tumbled. I went back to see if she was hurt but she had gotten away. I feel terrible. but I guess it comes with the (rural) territory.
I’m having major board-lust issues. Check out this 9′6″ Junod. awesome.
Shakas & Singlefins
Shakas & Singlefins is the blog of Ryan Tatar. If you’re in to photography and surfing, chances are you’re already hip to it. This guy churns out beautiful surf culture inspired photography by the pound, continuous daily updates of low-key california wave sliding gorgeousness directly to your rss reader.
The thing that I find most interesting about Tatar’s work is that although surfing is definitely a focus, it’s not the lion’s share of imagery, the subtle details surrounding the act of surfing are just as important. This idea is central to my own work on the subject as well and though I see tons of awesome surfing-related photography, Tatar’s work is truly more about the entire culture and process as a whole, rather than the isolated act.
If you don’t know, now you know.
Update: Ryan has just debuted an online store for purchasing his photos, over at his portfolio site. Shelter Surf Shop in Long Beach CA will be carrying some exclusive prints, so go support a fellow surfer/photog. I’m hoping to score a print of that blue-green/metallicy silhouette shot from his Drift Surf Mag feature. righteous.
