Crappy Camera + Weird Lighting =

February 11, 2013 by Gibber

Cool Photo

I am always trying crappy, lo-fi cameras. They have a way of screwing up in visually interesting ways. With film, I would always push reciprocity failure. With digital, really cheap lenses are my favorite. With light leaks, color shifts and grain, you can create some neat stuff.

Just as the sun cracked the horizon, a small wedge peak popped up. Add a really awful camera and you have a cool photo.

This shot, for example, I love. This is not something you would see with the natural eye. and nothing you could replicate with an Instagram filter or photoshop manipulation. This is just straight up lo-fi and it is stunning.

Wipeout of the Week:: Tim Saunders

February 9, 2013 by Gibber

Got endless supply of the Wee Lad taking lickings. He’s a good sport and makes more than he misses. But these frozen moments are entertainment unto themselves. A surfer wipesout inthe sunset

Vince Boulanger

February 7, 2013 by Gibber

Vince Boulanger is a great surfer.

He comes from my old stomping grounds of Ocean City, MD and he loves to skate — a few things that sound good in my book. Plus he’s a goofy. We hooked up a long time ago and got some shots. Because of my schedule, we only had two quick shoots. Neither the weather nor the waves cooperated, even though we were on the North Shore of Oahu in December. But thanks mostly to Vince’s skills, we got some sick stuff. Enjoy.

FrankenStorm

October 28, 2012 by Gibber

Glad to see the children of my peers showing up and blowing up!

Surfline feature on Sandy with Gabe Morvil

Longtime Wrightsville surfer/skater extroidinaire Jeff Morvil’s son Gabe snagging a pretty one. photo by Sean D. Ruttkay/EDAsurf.com

Ross Stevens in Brad Styron’s Sites.

Photo of Gabe was taken by Sean Ruttkay, go here: http://edasurf.com/
Photo of Ross by Brad Styron, go here: http://www.bradstyronphotography.com/

Wipeout of the Week:: Kamua Swain

July 4, 2012 by Gibber

Kamua Swain dives off on a macker filled with awful bumps and sandy pockets.

Good old Kamua. He loves a surf. A life-long frother. He has skills too. But as Skeets says, “Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.” In this case, Kamua Swain is getting gotten by the bear, or more specifically, a solid eight foot wall of sand. Check out the horrible lumps, bumps and ripples. As Freeman says, “We got a word for that. Lousy.”

Ocean City Barrels

July 4, 2012 by Gibber

Two beautiful waves break in the sunset light

The 48th Street Zone. Sunset, November 2004.

Xon Yule Zane :: XYZ Surfboards

May 27, 2012 by Gibber

Creative Guy Spotlight on Xon Zane

Zon shapes a good surfboard and has some great ideas about surfing and what to do on a wave. If you are in the Mid-Atlantic and need a good custom surf racing board, give Xon a ring. Or if you want to see if the left towards the jetty can be fun, head down there and watch the XYZ show.

Backside air at the Ocean City Inlet by Xon Zane

Making the most of anything is one of Xon's best surfing talents. He seems to be doing way more fun stuff than most people. Backside Rotator at Ocean City Inlet.

Frontside Nose bonk air by Xon Zane of Ocean City Maryland

Make it or not, still images of Xon's surfing turn into concrete evidence that Xon is trying some new stuff.

Foam mower, artist, surfer, dad. Zon at work in the creative creatio room, creating some creative new creations.

This shit is supposed to be fun

May 26, 2012 by Gibber

Lighten up Francis.

Most people start surfing because they are near the ocean and it is fun to play in the ocean. As we grow older and experience shows us all of the cool things we can do and learn from the ocean, the availability of having fun in the ocean grows. You can bodysurf the shore break. You can longboard small perfect waves. You can tow into big bombs. You can drop in on your friends. You can heckle beginners. You can ride switch stance into closeouts. You can take all your gear and travel to strange places to surf really fun waves with new friends.

At some point you encounter people who’s main goal is to be the best. At great cost to your fun. They take themselves and their surfing very seriously. A lot of the girls you will run into in the surf have that attitude. A lot of Brazilians too. And those people make me want to drop in on them everytime and pull my trunks down and moon them, everytime. Until they lighten up.

Next time there is really good surf, and the crowds are heavy and the vibe is full-on serious, go rent a beater and drop in on everyone and pull into tubes and laugh like you are mental. See who gets pissed off and who laughs with you. Good money says the person who laughs with you would be a better friend.

Knopp

March 10, 2012 by Gibber

Good old Knopp. Making the seemingly worthless waves very fun. Hawaii 2012, still laughing.

My friend Tom has more fun than you.

One of my favorite surf sessions ever, and a story I have retold ad nauseum, is one that involves a bodyboarder and some closeouts.

Not just any bodyboarder, but my main man and roommate at the time, Tom Knopp. And not just any closeouts, but large, mean, clean, heaving, 25-block-long, hurricane closeouts right behind our house.

So no one was around. No one really wanted anything to do with it. Not because it was so scary. But because it was just not really fun.

You could rush and get the view for a second, but there was no real graceful way to bring your ride to an end. No matter what way you went, it was the wrong way.

So as we sat there an looked over ledge after ledge, and pulled back again again, Knopp waited for bombs and smirked as he spun and went into the oblivion.

What at first looked like just unrestrained stoke coupled with some optimistic aneurysm turned into a show of how functional aerial surfing could be. Right as you are ready to write him off and look away, down the beach a lot farther than you would have imagined, Knopp’s body would soar out of the lip, into the air—upside down sometimes—and reconnect with the falling lip before disappearing again.

We had a reunion recently, more than 20 years after that day. And I gotta say, all of those memories came rushing back. I was so stoked to see Tom doing his thing. Making the lackluster surf all of us older surfers grumble at, look fun. Just like that day in 1987 behind Our Place At The Beach with Ricky B and Chris Street. Every time you looked back, Knopp was smiling from ear-to-ear at the “less-than-perfect” waves.