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.

Where have I been?

I thought I had blogged just a day or two ago. Now I see that it was a long, long time ago. So much has been on the go. Not sure how life goes from happening to out of control in just a few short days!

I am battling, even now, to understand what filled up my time. I suppose that there has been work in the form of a project in Durban which took up the whole of last week, as well as a couple of other ongoing projects. Then there has been quality time spent with a number of old friends that just happened to be in town. After a week with us, my mom went home to Johannesburg. And then there was the Freedom Day Classic, a longboard competition arranged by a good mate of mine. Somehow this good mate got me to agree to run a photographic competition for the duration of the weekend, but more about all of this later.

One thing that stands out in all of this rush was a visit to one of my wife’s cousins in Durban. Getting there was frustrating as three major traffic accidents practically shut down all access to their suburb. It took me two hours of suburb crawling with the aid of my phone’s GPS to eventually arrive at their doorstep. After that, it was an evening cocooned in care and love, with side dishes of great food, a really wonderful experience with an absolutely amazing family. I was sad to depart in the morning back to my project. So sad and confused that I jumped on the highway and drove in the wrong direction for 15 minutes before I realised I was heading away from Durban and not back into it! There was not a single sign to correct my misconception and it was my phone back to the rescue when I realised the landscape was becoming more beautiful rather than populous!

I hope you don’t all feel neglected, even my car looks at me forlornly every time I pass it in the garage. Somehow I have to track down statements from the previous owners of the chassis and engine before I can even think about getting it registered!

I will find the time...somewhere!