Compton Beach Panorama Vertorama, Isle of Wight., originally uploaded by s0ulsurfing.

A nice little summer swell rolls into Compton Bay

That’s it now, the last batch of surfing photographs from the last big day, maybe we’ll get another good swell now that they are all gone.

You can also see the five previous photo blogs here

http://soul-surfing.co.uk/you-shouldve-been-here-yesterday/ (15 photos)

http://soul-surfing.co.uk/yshbhy-part-two/ (15 photos)

http://soul-surfing.co.uk/hands-up-if-youre-having-fun-yet-yshbhy3/ (9 photos)

http://soul-surfing.co.uk/the-swell-that-just-kept-on-coming-yshbhy-4/ (12 photos)

http://soul-surfing.co.uk/you-should-have-been-here-in-february/ (14 photos)

Been so long since we’ve had a decent swell to ride here (and photograph), and with summer almost here, its probably not going to pick up anytime soon, so i returned to archives for ‘that day’ back in February, and had a look at the shots that were overlooked at the time, I took over 700 pictures that day, so there’s plenty to choose from! I’ve also tried to keep the processing to a minimum, just the occasional bit of ‘punch’ and horizon straightening in Lightroom!

You can also see the four previous photo blogs here

http://soul-surfing.co.uk/you-shouldve-been-here-yesterday/ (15 photos)

http://soul-surfing.co.uk/yshbhy-part-two/ (15 photos)

http://soul-surfing.co.uk/hands-up-if-youre-having-fun-yet-yshbhy3/ (9 photos)

http://soul-surfing.co.uk/the-swell-that-just-kept-on-coming-yshbhy-4/ (12 photos)

Just a photo blog today cos i had fun shooting them, and as much fun as the iphone hipstamatic was for the Walk the Wight blog, i definitely needed the 7D for these next shots!

Taken at the Owl Centre in Muncaster, in the Lake district. A fabulous place to visit, run by the ‘World Owl Trust’, another group of people working really hard to help endangered creatures.

All the shots here are watermarked lo-res web versions, if you are interested in using hi-res images for any reason please visit the wildlife gallery on my website, I will make a donation to the world owl trust for any sales made.

©2010 Jason Swain, All Rights Reserved
These images are not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.

Anyway, something a bit different from me today, an iphone blog taken during yesterdays 2010 Walk the Wight, in aid of the Earl Mountbatten Hospice.

I walked the 14 miles from Carisbrooke Castle to Alum Bay, many walked the full 26 miles across the Island starting in Bembridge.

I saw that wind and rain was widely predicted in all the weather forecasts on sunday morning, and after last years drenching, I decided not to take the big camera (quite literally a monkey of my back) and have a go using the hipstamatic app on my iphone. It mimics the analog film results of the old plastic toy cameras, and if you shake between shots, it randomly loads different lens and film types.

I hope you like the results, and if you enjoy viewing, maybe you can visit the charity site and make a donation!

Walk the Wight is the largest annual fund raising event on the Island, over 12,000 people walk walk from one end of the island to the other in aid of the Earl Mountbatten Hospice.

You can find out more about the walk (and make a donation if you like) here…
Walk the Wight

I talked about being in the right place at the right time (photographically speaking) in the first part of the blog, and for many of the classic lake shots, early morning or late evening light shows them at their best, with the peaks lit up and reflected beautifully in the calm waters of the lakes.

But for the stone circle at Castlerigg i think the bright sunshine and cumulus skies were just what i imagined, and exactly what i would have wanted. I called the first shot ‘Sun Worship’ because that’s what it felt like to me (i’ve no idea what they were really worshiping).

And heavy brooding skies seemed perfectly apt for the menacing presence of Scafell Pike and the desolate windswept landscape surrounding the Hardknott Roman Fort.

Not too much more to say about the photos really, hopefully you’ll enjoy looking at them, simple as that. One more set of Lake Landscapes to come, and them maybe an Owl blog, and hopefully one day in the not too distant future, i’ll get to see some waves again.

So once again i’m posting non-surfing pics on my site ‘dedicated to surf photography’. But its been a really long time since i’ve seen good waves, i’m struggling for anything surfing related to blog about again, and I was up in the Lake District the last time the Island had a swell, so there it is. Maybe soul-surfing will evolve to just being my general blog site if the surf doesn’t pick up soon!

I’m also pretty sure my surfing time will be badly affected by the fact that my good friend and surf buddy ‘pacey’ (psychedelic surfer on fiickr) has gone travelling for a year. So i wont be getting those excited early morning phone calls on cold winter mornings telling me to get my ass out of bed because the bay is going off and there’s no one in! I hope he stops to think about that as he pulls into another barrel in indo or Oz the lucky #!$@#….

So back to the lakes, it was my first trip to this stunning part of the world, and the first time i can remember going anywhere without a surfboard or wetsuit in a very long time. The only thing that sweetened that pill beforehand was that I would be taking my new camera, and i’d get to try out the 7D on some seriously beautiful landscapes.

Of course visiting somewhere as photographed as the lakes comes with its own pressures, I’ve seen some truly amazing images from the lake district, and aside from having the right kit and the skills to use it properly, a big part of getting a great landscape is knowing where to be to catch the best light and compositions, and then of course having good lighting conditions happen whilst you’re there.

I could add that you need to be in the right place creatively speaking too, but i’m taking that for granted here, because if the lakes don’t inspire you, you’re not meant to be a landscape photographer.

Bearing that in mind, and being honest with myself, I dont think i’d call any of the shots I came back with anything really special. The trip reminded me that i’m still on a learning curve with photography, and I’m also certain that i need to be there a lot longer and at different times of the year to really even begin to see and understand the beauty of the place and appreciate the rhythms of nature and weather up there. It’s not all bad, I do like some of the shots, but many are lacking that certain something that you get when you truly know a place. I’m also wondering if i should pick up the paint brushes again, I’ve got a little itch somewhere in my mind, and maybe the problem i have with the photos is just that they’re not paintings?

So here’s the first batch of photos anyway, your thoughts and constructive feedback are appreciated, i’ll probably do a couple more photo-blogs from up there and then move on to something new, (I’ll also try and talk a bit more about the place and the walking / hiking / climbing in the next blog)

*Bonus surfing pic because i cant ignore surfing completely! this one is for Pacey, hope you & SJ have a great trip mate

So… more fun shooting red squirrels than surfers? well you got to do something when the sea is flat for weeks on end.

It’s not more fun than surfing itself, i can just about remember how much i love that, and it’s been so long since we had good waves to take photos of (6th feb) that i might have just forgotten the fun of doing that. But for the last few days, dawn patrol has been in my back garden with red, and i’ve been more excited about that than i remember being watching the action at Compton or Freshwater Bay.

It started with the squirrel box that i got for my last birthday (thanks freya) and lots of expert advice from Paul Blackley (who has to be the best wildlife photographer on the Island in my book). The fact that i got the Canon 7d now and it can shoot at 8fps and up to IOS 6400 helps too, but the secret mostly consists of a big bag of hazelnuts and a lot of patience.

After a while i’ve learnt the routes he takes, and where he likes to bury the nuts, but its the way he bounces around at high speed and constantly keeps you guessing what he will do next that makes it such good fun to try and catch with a camera. There is a similarity there with surf photography, but i’ve found that after watching and taking pics for years, i can usually read the wave and anticipate what a surfer will do next,  compared to that a squirrel is just a lot more random and so in that way, exciting.

These shots (except the obvious ‘urban acid’ surfing edit) are all shot in RAW and posted here as mostly sooc (straight out of camera) apart from the odd crop and in a few cases a little tweak to the contrast or exposure. In addition to being the first action shots with the new 7D, it’s also the first time i’ve used lightroom (beta 3.2) for managing the files and i’m liking the really subtle control and streamlined workflow its given me.

And because i couldn’t ignore surfing completely, i’ve chucked in an edit of one of my favourite photos from the last good swell.

Hope you like the pics, comments, feedback and criticism are all welcome in the comments box below!

Will it mean more crowds at Freshwater bay and fields? as surely a certain % of surfers will stop and have a look at those breaks, if they are forced to detour via Freshwater Bay to get to Hanover car park. Or will everyone try and squeeze into Brook car park and walk along the cliffs or beach?

Of course, miracles might happen and either the erosion will stop where it is, and one lane of the military road will remain open (those traffic lights will be fun in the summer) or maybe someone will come up with the £10m figure thats being bandied about as the amount needed to sort it out.

*** UPDATE (24-03-2010) ***

Here’s an email i got this morning from Jill Wareham who’s running a facebook campaign to save the road, better act soon if you want it to stay open!

Subject: Military Road will close at Brook
The recommendation to the Cabinet (7 Councillors) of the Isle of Wight Council due to meet on 30th March is that when the road becomes unsafe, the council truncates the road both side of the breach at point (between Brook and Compton) and install turning heads and improve car parking as necessary.
This means that the Council don’t care – they’ve done no consultation with the public and the road could close at this point tomorrow.
Please write to Cllr Giles the Councillor in charge of roads at edward.giles@iow.gov.uk if you don’t want this to happen.
7 Councillors could let this road close – is this what you want?

*** UPDATE (31-03-2010) ***

So a week later, and Jill is reporting good news on the facebook group today, the Councillors have decided to defer the decision to close the road. People power works! They have decided that they are going to consult people – possibly because of the amount of emails Cllr Giles has had this week. They are also going to get round the table with Natural England and the Environment Agency, etc to see what can be done.

Here’s a few pics* i took there last week, and also a couple of bonus ones from Brook, proving that whilst it can be beautiful there, there’s also still a bit of beach cleaning to be done here to… (thats not a dig at the great job done with the recent SAS beach clean at Grange by the way, just a reminder that there’s always more to do, and always will be as long as people keep treating the sea like a garbage dump)

*please note that the image with the bus is deliberately trying to attract interest and spark debate by exaggerating reality. The wide angle lens and the low angle,  and a bit of extra editing are all designed to make that look more dramatic than it really is. Although with all the rain we had over the last few days, reality might now have imitated art and overtaken it.

*update…. All i had to do was have a moan and the waves came nice swell the last few days!

The only plus side i can see is that i’ve got a lot more work done in the last few weeks, and ons of the things i’ve achieved is (get ready for the shameless plug setting up a spring promotion on my www.jasonswain.co.uk website where you can purchase any of the surfing or wave prints from my galleries.

Get 25% off all photo products (prints, cards, canvases etc) in my spring promotion.
Use the coupon code ‘SPRUNG’ at the checkout to get your discount! The offer runs to the end of May 2010.

A few examples of how the prints look when framed…

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