Longboard and Photographs

This weekend past was all about longboarding. For the surf uninitiated, longboarding is surfing on a surfboard of at least 9 foot in length. One has to surf longboards differently too, long flowing carves and turns are the way it is done. Hang 5’s and 10’s (5 or 10 toes over the front edge of the board) and headstands are highly appreciated by anyone watching, and are marvellously difficult to do!

A year ago, my good mate, Andy, created the Freedom Day Longboard Classic to celebrate this old school sport in a very old school manner. This competition is different in that it celebrates our love for this sport and the sea and combines it with a family spirit. What makes it all really special is that the local surfing community is a bit of a tight knit family with generations of surfers on friendly terms with each other.

A week ago, Andy asked me to look after a new element of the competition; the photography! It sounded simple enough, run a photographic contest, give out some prizes and perhaps even sell the pictures. A team of us gave the project some good thought and we got busy!

The competition this year was bigger than last, mainly due to the brilliant weather over the weekend. The forecast predicted heavy winds for the Saturday but they did not materialise at all. Instead it was all about small waves, long boards, sunny rays, and lots of family fun. I even surfed two heats and failed dismally to impress the judges even after a headstand and two handstand attempts.

Photographic reality was interesting. 11 photographers entered our new competition. Their zealousness for the art of pixelating reality far surpassed my wildest expectations and by the end of Saturday a whopping 3,110 photographs had been committed to my PC’s memory. How on earth we were going to sell any of them was beyond imagination, as it would have required days to review them all. And we were only halfway through the competition...

On Sunday I gave up even trying to sell photographs and instead focussed on getting the 20 best pictures out of each photographer. We had a local sports photography specialist do the judging which resulted in our top 6 pictures in two categories; mood and sport shots. Interestingly enough the winner of the mood category was a 13 year old boy with an incredible eye for a special picture. The prizes which had been donated by a local school of photography and art were incredible and well worth the effort.

And that is the story of how we somehow combined the old art of longboarding with the new art of digital photography, and had heaps of fun in the process.