BIRTHRIGHT from Sean Mullens on Vimeo.

and a bonus sequence of pacey making the most of a little one that same day, the 12 shots took place over 13 seconds, but somehow its become 30 seconds long in iMovie because i messed about with the ‘ken burns’ settings and i dont really know what i’m doing

Time for a bit of blatant self promotion and cheesy sentiment, so if you’re offended by either of those, look away now.

Thank you Flickr.com ….

I’d like to say thanks to all the people who follow my s0ulsurfing account on Flickr and who having seen my pictures from around the island over the last few years said that i should be working for the tourist board. People mostly say nice stuff to each other on Flickr (its like the opposite of magicseaweed), so i don’t like to get carried away with any praise, for many its a social network first and serious photographic appreciation second, but many of my contacts on there are awesome photographers, and i do value their judgment, and their words. So without getting carried away, i also know that sometimes i can produce decent work, and the feedback I get is genuine.

So encouraged by those words, I eventually wrote to all the various parties responsible for isle of wight tourism, mentioned the comments and suggested that they might like to use some of my photos to help promote the island. And to cut a long story short, the good people at the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce (who are now responsible for publishing the islands tourist guides) responded positively,  and a few meetings later, here it is, my photos are in this years official 2010 ISLE OF WIGHT accommodation guide.

60 of my images have been used in total, including the two on the front cover, and you can take a look yourself at the interactive brochure here http://www.gowight.com/brochure/

I’ve followed the debate about the merits of the brochure design over on the ventnorblog website (http://ventnorblog.com/2010/01/18/interest-in-tourism-guide-strong/), some islanders have liked it but its not been universally well received here, some dont like the colours and feel of the cover, but personally i think its a great piece of design by the talented local designer Aaron Rudd, and the IWCC report that its creating lots of interest and orders are strong (which is what really counts).

Not all of the images are mine, but i think there are 60 from me, 3 from my good friend Paul Blackley and the remaining 26 are from either Steve Thearle or Tom Stroud. I’m talking about the ‘editorial’ images here, the ones used to illustrate island locations, not those of the hotels etc.

So thanks again flickr, this wouldn’t have happened without you, and i’m writing about it here on soul-surfing because following on from the positive coverage that island surfing got during the ‘wight surf history‘ exhibition, its a surfing image that’s made the front cover, and some people reading might recognise Andrew Swinton posing on his longboard on a lovely summers evening at Compton Fields last year.

Summer longboarding

http://www.whatdigitalcamera.com/blogs/news/441924/weekend-surf-gallery.html

Click here for part one of ‘You should have been here yesterday’

Click here for part two of ‘You should have been here yesterday’

Click here for part three of ‘You should have been here yesterday’

Click here for part one of ‘You should have been here yesterday’

Click here for part two of ‘You should have been here yesterday’

The shot was taken during the good swell on the 6th Feb 2010, you can see more from that day in the ‘You should’ve been here yesterday…’ blog

Life is just a series of peaks and troughs. Retro surf style

Click here for part one of ‘You should have been here yesterday’

There were quite a few eye witness’s to Al Reed’s full on barrel ride, but sadly i dont think anyone manged to get a shot of it, there is one included here of him going into one another one, but he didnt make it out this time.

Read part one here

The 14 images shown here, are taken from a sequence of 32 shots that took place over a period of 16 seconds (which was co-incidentally the same time that what was quoted as the wave-period for the swell that day).

I think like all sites it’s best considered a ‘work in progress’ and the look and feel may evolve as the content grows (its week one of a two year project) but i’m reasonably happy with this first stab at it, and I would love to hear your feedback on the design, technology or content, good or bad.

screengrab of wightsurfhistory.co.uk

We’ve just come to the end of a great run of waves here on the Isle of Wight, winter is always best for surf here but i cant remember such a run of quality swell for quite a few years. Some big days, some small, some offshore, some glassy, some cross-shore (or even onshore) and bumpy, some low-tide at the reefs, some high-tide beach-break, and it was fun to surf in them all, for different reasons.

Perhaps it was the pure adrenaline of taking the drop on a bigger day and praying you made that bottom turn, or maybe it was trying to find a little space inside one of the hollow waves created by strong offshores, or maybe it was that smooth gliding feeling of that last glassy face just before the sun went down (i cant really think of a good reason to go with the on-shores yet, except that some days even that is better than not surfing!)

But this blog is about the day when it all felt ‘just right’ the goldilocks day, when the swell was a decent size but not intimidating (still strong enough to snap someones board out there though). When it was consistent  and reliable and there wasnt a 15 minute wait between decent sets. When the wind was light offshore, holding the waves up for that bit longer, but not so strong that you had to take off blinded by the spray. And when for some reason the break wasnt too crowded and for the most part there were plenty of waves to go around.

OK, it might have been nicer if it wasnt so cold, and maybe with a few less people you would have got more waves, but if you’re not happy on a day like thursday 21st January 2010, then i doubt you ever will be surfing here up the channel, and maybe you should look into those emigration plans a bit more seriously.

And a real bonus for me is that a good friend and great photographer Paul Blackley turned up with his camera and got some nice shots of me surfing on this day, so for once i dont just have to rely on memories to bring it all back.

He also shot a pretty good sequence which you can see here in part two of the blog

* The Goldilocks Principle states that something must fall within certain margins, as opposed to reaching extremes. It is used, for example, in the Rare Earth hypothesis to state that a planet must neither be too far away from, nor too close to, the sun to support life. Either extreme would result in a planet incapable of supporting life.[1] Such a planet is colloquially called a “Goldilocks planet”. The Goldilocks Principle comes from a children’s story Goldilocks and the Three Bears in which a little girl found a house owned by three bears. Each bear owned a separate copy of many things, such as food, beds, etc. After testing each of the three, Goldilocks determined that one was always too much in one extreme (too hot, too large, etc.), one was too much in the opposite extreme (too cold, too small, etc.), and one was “just right.”