Paudies Photoblog

… is

Spending the weekend with no signal.

By the time Pete dropped me off home we had covered over 850km, and he still had at least another 150km to go.

Two photographers, one swell, no surfers.

I’m totally going to blog about this

Some people had their doubts but it had to be a good swell, that low was lining up too nicely to not deliver.

Some people were right.

It didn’t deliver, well not where I was anyway.

But we did get to surf ourselves which is always nice, and I did get to find out that my barrel riding skills are pretty much non existent, unless it’s Easky left, where I rule.

All I got for my trouble was a few slits in my hand and 8 urchin spines in my left foot. It’s good to have an amateur acupuncturist dad around at times like that (only a bit of one spine remains).

Imagine that everybody was productive 100% of the time, imagine how much we could get done.

I spent at least two hours today reading meaningless facts on the web. Thanks to the Irish education system I’m well able to memorise and recall a lot of pointless shite, but try and get me to understand a new concept and it might take a while. Which is not the handiest when I’m meant to be doing innovative research.

I hope you managed to get wet anyway.

If you have the time Fergal Smith has been put forward to be a contestant for the Eddie, which is amazing. He definitely deserves it and you can help him by going to this site and voting for him.

Also Mickey Smith has been nominated in the 2009 Surfer Poll for this photo of Fergal.

You can go here, click on the Vote for a Photo image and then pick Mickeys image. You can pick other images if you want, but Mickey’s is fucking ridiculously awesome. The best way to appreciate it is to see it in the opening spreads of the Surfer Big Issue with the Irish feature. In shops now, check it out.

Waves due.

Have Fun

Don’t swallow too much sea water.

Well I got a new camera.

Picked up a GoPro Wide a week or two ago.

I only got to try it out at the weekend. There was a Tubes skate comp on in Cork, so I popped down to check it out. I had no idea what the field of view was like so I just filmed a few little clips to check it out, turns out it’s pretty bloody wide, which is sweet. A little disappointed with the quality of the video to be honest, thought it might be a little better. But maybe there’s some setting I’ve gotten wrong on it, must check.

Anyway, here’s the vid.

Mardyke Jam 16-08-09 from Paudie Scanlon on Vimeo.

Cool painting of Doolin by local artist

This was meant to be part two of my walk home story. But it’s not as interesting, so only a short post.

So here’s the shots.

Industrial-Age-England comes to Cork. Nice Lines.

Another one bites the dust.

Go Super Dog (I hope my dog is as crazy as this)

“Irish” team surfer Liam Joyce is travelling with his lady friend down the coast of Europe competing in various QS’s over the next few weeks in his big tank Frank. Follow the story here. I say “Irish” as he’s a Kiwi surfing under the Irish flag, but in fairness he rips, so we won’t complain.

There’ll always be another swell.

But it’s hard to remember that when you’re missing the swell today. Newly wed Tom Doidge-Harrison on one of his DH designs.

Especially when there’s good light.

But we all have to make choices, and surfing isn’t the only thing to take photos of.

Today is my Grandad Jim’s first anniversary, so a post to honor him.

My over-riding memory of him is the smoking, for years it was a pipe and then eventually ridiculously smelly cigarettes.

When I was very young I never really liked going to his house at all, probably because it meant I wouldn’t be out playing. But then there was Fanore.

Grandad had a caravan in Fanore for a long time and we would go up a few times every summer. Having a caravan ourselves this was nothing too special, but Fanore has a wild feel about it. It’s not built up like Lahinch. The caravans are spread seemingly at random throughout some grassy hills and sand dunes, some of which were easily the biggest things I had seen in my life. I guess this is where I got my cliff jumping bug, leaping from the tops of the dunes you could clear at least 15 feet before you hit the sand and rolled away laugh/choking on the sand in your face is a hell of a lot of fun when you’re under ten (or any age for that matter).

There was a big stream/small river running down beside the caravan that would swell with the rain and gave us hours of fun and I’m pretty sure I was the first person ever to explore the whole thing.

There were the dogs as well, Girlie and another that has been pushed from my mind by pointless phone numbers that my mobile remembers for me anyway. The dogs would always tear off chasing the crazy amount of rabbits that used to race around the caravan park.

Grandad had been a ship builder which, I used to tell everyone, was the best type of carpenter you could be. Knowing this has definitely given me part of my love of building things, even if my greatest achievement so far is a flat pack kitchen unit from Ikea, I will progress I tell you.

I suppose I was always a little in awe of him (when I wasn’t coughing and wiping my nose). He was a big guy, hands like shovels type of guy. But they weren’t big lumps and neither was he; his hands had helped craft all sorts of boats, and his mind was sharp right until the end.

I was visiting him in hospital a few weeks before he died and was doing my usual quick explanation of what I was studying for my PhD. Now most people tend to zone out when I start talking about what I do, or else listen carefully then change the subject straight away. But Grandad listened carefully then asked a completely relevant question. For an old man lying in a hospital bed with no training or interaction with modern electronics I was amazed, and really very happy that I was related to this man.

Grandad came out to our house for a lot of Christmas dinners, and every year without fail I would break my moms heart by walking out of the room whenever the fags came out. I don’t regret walking out, but I think I understand why mom would let him smoke, instead of kicking him outside the door like I wanted to.

I was at another funeral recently and I got to thinking about life and death, knowing it was close to Grandads anniversary he was the person mostly occupying my mind. I’m not in anyway spiritual and I don’t think a person has any type of soul that lives on. But they do live on with us. If we’re away from people all we have is memories of them anyway, so, to me, dying isn’t really that different. This person makes an impact on us to such an extent that we’ll never forget those memories.

And while the next generation may not have those memories to carry on, the influence of that person upon us will definitely be passed on to others.

Because of the whole not believing in heaven thing, I regularly get worked up thinking about purpose and meaning to life. I will accept that we have no over-arching purpose being here, but we damn well should make a purpose for ourselves. Einstein said something about a life is only worthwhile if the person has added something to society, this is what I try to live by and I got a little sad thinking that Grandad had devoted most of his life to working on boats that were quickly outdated and replaced. He was together enough to learn how to use a computer and write a book, but it’s a small book and one that is unlikely to be read by many.

But then I realised that Grandad had greatly influenced all of his children and definitely had some influence on his grandchildren. So like I said above he has definitely contributed something brilliant and that will never die.

So, I regularly have disagreements with myself.

Mostly they’re to do with art.

What I think of it in general, if what I do is art, if so does that make me an artist? Or do I just take photos of things that I think look nice, and that’s not actually really art at all?

This mostly comes from the fact that I think most art is a pile of crap; people telling me that some wiry little model/clay lump of shit/couple of splashes of paint on a canvas “means something”.

When in actual fact it’s really just some wiry little model/clay lump of shit/couple of splashes of paint on a canvas. It may look nice but it doesn’t say anything about how TV dinners have affected your world outlook on racism in pre 1940′s movies.

But sometimes I manage to get past all that and motivate myself to go do something new. This time it was to capture the feeling of my walk in to work,  (even now I’m getting angry at myself using the phrase “capture the feeling”) I like to look around a lot and there’s a lot of beautiful things surrounding us every day, you just need to take a new look at them.

So I brought my camera in one day last week and took my time walking home, stopping to shoot whatever I saw. One of the things that older photographers always seem to give out about is all the new digital-only-photographers tendency to shoot 10 frames when they only needed one, so I made sure I took my time to compose each shot properly and check my settings before opening the shutter.

I’m always amazed at the portraits some street photographers seem to get. There always seems to be at least one drunk guy on my walk, so I gave him a smile and just asked, “fire away, it’s a great day”. Great to meet a drunk with such a positive outlook.

What got me here was the symmetry, and the fact that there’s this small little “gated” community so close to the city centre.

By the time I had gotten this shot the drunk had wandered on down the road and sat down for a picnic.

I think this next one is the back of the Ear, Nose and Throat hospital on Western Road. It’s not in condition out the back, a lot of decay, boom boom.

There’s a cricket ground that gets fairly regular use during the summer so I stuck my head in the gate to have a quick look at the practice going on. I really like the church in the background, but not sure what it’s called. Possibly Sundays Well?

More symmetry. These houses are just at the eastern entrance to Fitzgeralds Park on Mardyke Walk and immediately stand out because of the colour scheme. The council recently finished fixing up this road and put in nice new street lamps as well.

Just a nice change from the normal gate’s into houses. “I will build An Arch”

This is the playing pitch at the Mardyke Arena, with the shaky bridge and another church in the background. One cool thing about all the hills in Cork is the layers it gives to photos. Just past the fence at the far end of the pitch is a brilliant walk that goes right beside the river for about 500m, loads of big old trees, very cool.

It’s not an every day occurence on the walk in, but it’s a pretty kitty anyway. Seems fairly unimpressed by me though.

Seemingly abandoned house right across from the Mardyke Arena.

More symmetrical design but with asymmetrical upkeep.

More to come tomorrow.

So the ISA World Surfing Games are on at the moment and we have a few crew competing.

Start with the best news, newly wed Nicole Morgan came first in her heat, which is awesome and it an easy task.

Both Fergal Smith and Liam Joyce came second in their heats which means they both progress straight into round two, but both will be facing current WCT surfers.

Fergal is up against World No. 13 Mick Campbell while Joycey comes up against No. 30 Dayan Neve, both of whom come from Australia.

Steve Kilfeather and Ronan Oerzten failed to progress through their heats but will surf again in crazy system I don’t really understand called repercharge.

Tahlia Britton and longboarder John McCurry are yet to surf.