Only had time for a really quick surf at lunchtime, and no photos either, but i did get back in the evening to shoot a few SUP’s enjoying some low tide sunset action, and Paul has also shared a few more from sunday so i though i’d do a part two for this blog!

So, first of all, a few more of me from sunday..

Date: Sunday 25th March
Location: Compton Bay, Isle of Wight
Surfer: Me (Jason Swain)
Photographer: Paul Blackley

Then a few more taken by me of the Monday…

Date: Monday 26th March
Location: Compton Bay, Isle of Wight
Surfers: Paul Blackley, Dave and Elliot Gray
Photographer: Me (Jason Swain)

Although unfortunately i didn’t get any photos myself, as I was too busy surfing on the Sunday. I was lucky that my good friend and excellent photographer Paul Blackley was there with his big lens to catch a few for me. And I was able to return the favour the next day by shooting a few of him nabbing a few fun sized ones on the Monday

Date: Sunday 25th March
Location: Compton Bay, Isle of Wight
Surfer: Me (Jason Swain)
Photographer: Paul Blackley

Date: Monday 26th March
Location: Compton Bay, Isle of Wight
Surfers: Paul Blackley, Dave and Elliot Gray
Photographer: Me (Jason Swain)

But it has a certain something that i like, the quirky englishness of the way she’s standing there in her stripy pink wellies! and the way the long shadow anchors her to the corner of the frame.

It was hastily arranged (in a few hours) with the first willing female i could find in reaction to a request from a potential client who was on a deadline, i don’t think it will come to fruition with that particular customer, but I thought it was worth giving the shot its moment in the spotlight here.

Massive thanks to Sally for being game to turn up at short notice and wade about in a very cold english channel (the boots came off a bit later) whilst i tried to figure out the best way to deal with shooting almost directly into about a billion megawatts of direct sunlight.

Mustang Sally – Lady Surfer, originally uploaded by s0ulsurfing.

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©2012 Jason Swain, All Rights Reserved
This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.

This and the other photos on the site are all ©2012 Jason Swain with All Rights Reserved. The image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer. Please contact me via email photo@jasonswain.co.uk if you want to use it in any way or license it for your own project.

Real waves on their way though, there’s a nice big deep low pressure system in the North Atlantic heading our way soon!

The Surf on the Isle of Wight is head high (if you squat right down), originally uploaded by s0ulsurfing.

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©2009 Jason Swain, All Rights Reserved
This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.

This and the other photos on the site are all © Jason Swain with All Rights Reserved. The image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer. Please contact me via email photo@jasonswain.co.uk if you want to use it in any way or license it for your own project.

Returning to a familiar theme for this blog, and probably for most people who ever done a bit of Isle of Wight surfing too, the old ‘you should have been here yesterday’ routine.

Over the last 20 years I’ve built my life next to the sea and the West Wight in particular, with the simple (and now not so secret) aim of leading a quiet life and surfing whenever possible,  as well as trying to avoid hearing that dreaded sentence so often heard in Isle of Wight surfing circles ’you should have been here yesterday’ as much as possible too.

But sometimes life has other plans for you, and after a few weeks of niggling broadband complications and lots of support calls and emails (involving a long boring story of telephone exchanges being upgraded to ADSL+, a ten year old router not being able to keep up with the change, and then a mystery line fault that pretty much seemed to me to have lots to do with a very windy and rainy night)  i couldn’t really be out when the engineer was finally scheduled to come and test the line and put me out of my misery.  I wanted to but couldn’t really hang a ‘gone surfing‘ note on the door and hope he would come back later (why don’t BT introduce that as an option when you sign up?)

Of course the only time-slot available on the morning of Friday 16th December, coincided with the biggest swell in weeks, and of course it was also the only day the wind blew offshore after endless days of howling onshores.

So, the day after triple overhead clean sets were reported as being ridden at my local break (from reliable local sources, who wouldn’t exaggerate the conditions) Saturday morning found me at Freshwater bay bright and early, full of hope and excitement for what i might find. Inevitably the classic conditions from the day before were long gone, and to be honest what was left looked pretty unappealing out there with the wind now blowing cross-shore and the swell not really doing it with the sets barely head high.

BUT… remembering my last blog and how i ended up kicking myself for passing up what turned out to be the last waves for a few weeks, this time i didn’t hang around in two minds and encouraged by a couple of hungover locals, pacey & sam, who turned up for a look too, decided to get in there and blow away a few cobwebs anyway.

The good news is that the swell picked up a bit and although it certainly wasn’t anything like the classic conditions of the day before, we had a few overhead sets, and a few bumpy but fun rides, and of course, its always better to have been in than sat around thinking about it.

After a quick surf and to make the most of the morning, i grabbed my camera and headed up onto the cliffs and got a few shots from a different point of view (away from my old favourites of the cabbage patch or right in front of the albion hotel) Whilst Andrew Court, Matt Harwood, Ian Pacey and James Ranson made the most of what was left before it really did get a bit windy. Even managed to get a few shots of some local birds and a random fishing boat in the line-up to complete this little episode of Isle of Wight surfing.

My reasons seemed sound enough at the time, I’d surfed some amazing waves the night before (so only about 12 hours previously) and for most of the previous week (November was an epic month for surf this year on the South Coast), and as the swell had dropped off so much, i didn’t want to erase and replace the great waves i still had in my mind, with the little tiddlers on offer in front of me.

In my defence, i didn’t completely waste my time, at least i took a few photos, managing to catch a few rare photos of Paul Blackley surfing, the even more rare sight of Pacey on a longboard, the quite common sight of chris court falling off a SUP and  few nice ones of a puppy playing fetch on the beach, but looking back at the pics now…. just stop thinking about it and get wet and have some fun, you never know when the winds gonna turn, and its been blowing onshore pretty much ever since.

The endless summer is over, hurricane swells are finally on the horizon, and it’s time to get back in the water and do some surfing here on the Isle of Wight. But before I dive into the sea and finally wash away those months of calm sea summer blues, I’m blogging today about the new snowboarding documentary film I’ve just seen called “ The Art of Flight“.

Produced by a team comprising Quiksilver, Red Bull‘s new media division “Red Bull Media House“, and “Brain Farm Cinema“, a boutique production house that specialises in “aerial cinematography” and two years in the making, the film sets out to redefine what is possible in the mountains.

Snowboarding legend Travis Rice handpicks a group of riders from the best the snowboarding world has to offer to join him on his quest. From Olympic medalists to big mountain slayers, this group of snowboarders is the best of the best,  including John Jackson, Mark Landvik, Scotty Lago, Nicolas Müller, DCP, Jake Blauvelt, Pat Moore, Jeremy Jones, Mark McMorris and others.

The first thing to say right away is, I’m not a snowboarder. I’ve always wanted to give it a go, but apart from mucking around on Tennyson down with my mates in the 6 inches of frozen chaos that closed the UK down last winter, and the occasional bout of Wii Winter Sports on the balance board, I have never had the opportunity. So I’m not qualified to rate this film from a technical point of view.  But, I am a surfer and i do love following Extreme Sports, travelling and photography, and I found the film really appealing to me on all three levels.

1. The Art of Flight - Viewing it as a traveller 

One of the things that sets the film apart from lots of action sports films is the integration of a storyline, which highlights the highs and lows of  traveling to massively remote locations. Chilean Patagonia’s Darwin Range, Alaska’s Tordrillo Range, Wyoming’s Snake River Range, Aspen Colorado, the Andes, and British Columbia’s Kootenay Mountains, Revelstoke and Goat Range are the epic stages for this pumped production. In that respect, it feels like some of my favourite independent surf movies, and maybe even a little like the aforementioned all-time classic, “endless summer”, in heading to previously uncharted territories for the sport and showing the adventures and dramas that are inevitable on such a journey.

2. The Art of Flight - Viewing it as a surfer…

…which in many ways is another ‘extreme sport’ (just not when you’re long boarding 3ft beach break at Compton bay on the Isle of Wight). I was blown away by the sheer athleticism of the riders and the incredible Tricks and stunts they were pulled off. Mark McMorris,17-year-old snowboarder, lands an enormous Triple Cork 1440 (that’s three inverted manoeuvres paired with four complete lateral rotations – the newest, biggest trick in snowboarding) then stomps it during the Aspen/Snowmass shoot.

It wasn’t till a while after I had finished watching that I remembered my age and the reality that my chance of doing anything quite like this has probably passed me by – in this life at least.

So, I can’t directly relate any of my small wave experiences to the monster mountain scenes in the movie, but the whole dropping from a helicopter thing reminded me of watching extreme surf movies from Teahaupo (Fiji) or Jaws (Hawaii) and people being towed into monster waves. And i do know that the step up to that from recreational surfing along the UK coast is beyond most of us mere mortals and I suspect 99.99% of recreational snowboarders won’t be falling from the sky anytime soon either!

I’m no great shakes as a surfer, but i can catch a decent ride on a good day. For the record, I’ve paddled out a few times in what most of us would call proper scary surf, in a range of say between 6 and 10ft of proper groundswell (= double overhead and a bit surf), once or twice here on the island, a few times in Cornwall and Devon and a few times overseas. And I can confirm that it was more than enough and there’s no way I would have the ability and balls to take on the 30ft + stuff that people get towed into!

So to conclude that ramble down memory lane with something approaching a point, I’m pretty sure most snowboarders aren’t up to taking on the slopes and situations shown in this movie either. But that’s not why we watch them is it? We want to be excited and terrified and blown away by the sheer madness of it all and get some kicks by living vicariously through watching the pros perform tricks we can only dream of. And, in that respect, this film really delivers as Travis and his mates take the action to a new level.

3. The Art of Flight - Viewing it as a photographer

I was genuinely mesmorised by the incredible cinematography and beauty of it all and i couldn’t help thinking that there are any number of frames that would be worth sitting and contemplating as a still image in an art exhibition.

The unusual angles and dramatic camera techniques give us the viewer a really immersive experience and must be as close as you can get to actually being there yourself, whilst still sitting on a sofa,

And on a personal note… was it really shot with a canon EOS camera? Could i shoot that sort of quality with my 7D? This film made me want to get out there and start shooting video myself if that’s what they are capable of! Surely that high definition slo-mo stuff is made using top-end equipment? It looks like some of the best work from the BBC natural history department (the amazing ‘blue planet’ series comes to mind).

So, there you go! All in all I’d say it’s a pretty amazing piece of film making. But you don’t have to take my word for it – you can see it for yourselves now. It’s available on iTunes and you can find out more on the film’s website: www.redbull.com/artofflight, including rider profiles, photo stories and related articles.

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Viral video by ebuzzing

Dreaming of an Endless Summer, originally uploaded by s0ulsurfing.

i’m just about to head out into a freezing fog looking for surf this morning, and my mind wandered back to my last trip to Cornwall and surfing under these beautiful skies at Gwithian. The idea of an Endless Summer really is just a dream for most of us surfing here in the UK.

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

Hipsta Holidays, originally uploaded by s0ulsurfing.

Finally remembered to upload some photos from my iphone, here’s a SOOC hipstamatic view of the lighthouse and beach at Godrevy with little fluffy clouds and surfers.
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©2010 Jason Swain, All Rights Reserved
This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.

I know pride comes before a fall, and i do try to keep a good sense of perspective on any ‘success’ i might have with my photos, but i will admit to being a bit ‘chuffed’ (thats english for happy for my global friends) when this popped through my letterbox at the weekend.

I’d been asked to be in the magazine quite a few weeks back, but had no idea what sort of size the image would be, so it was a really nice surprise to find a double page spread inside.

The mag itself is billed as a “digital lifestyle magazine” and looks like a pretty good mix of product review, how-to articles and interviews with photographers (i’m not on the payroll

Digital Photography Enthusiast Magazine

Empty wave at Porthcurno

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

Fragments from a beautiful day at Porthcurno.
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©2010 Jason Swain, All Rights Reserved
This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.