Paudies Photoblog

Oh please let me get waves this weekend.

Ollie “The Fla” O’Flaherty stalling hard for the pit man.

Get your Buzz on.

What is fairness?

Something we think we deserve because we’re good people?

Who cares? Who decides? There is no fairness.

You try to be a good person, because if you treat everyone fairly well then you’ll receive the same in return, right?

Bullshit.

I’m sick of it.

And whatever about people you can forget about fairness from anywhere else.

Last 15 surf trips been skunks?

So what, so is this one.

This time all out hard work will pay off. Oh wait, there’s nobody keeping score about how diligent you are, the last time you got something worthwhile.

Waves? Sure here’s a perfect looking swell.

Photos? Hah you’re joking right? Here’s a fog so thick you can’t even see the waves from beach.

Dream on sunny-jim.

Ok, ok. Here’s some sunshine at a shite beach break and reef  that isn’t breaking properly.

Good luck to you.

I’m sick of it.

There is no fairness.

From A Day in 2007.

Man I kept some awful shots back then.

Beach Walk

Ferg and Damo

Danny Boy back in the mix after a long time dry docked.

Sponsor Love,  Damien Conway.

John McCall

Alex winding up

Damo, half way through a barrel I mostly missed because I got bored and caught a bodywave.

McCall hack.

Stef, should’ve gone left.

John again

Would have been so sweet.

See, end section of above wave.

Head in the clouds. Dan Skajarowski.

Stef Baz.

The boy wonder returns from the land of boardies and brah’s.

Didn’t take him long to get back into the swing of things.

Isn’t physics fun.

It’s keeping me busy anyway. Lots of swell but lots of wind.

Backlit Beauty.

Why do we prefer people to be humble? What’s wrong with promoting yourself . The best way to get jobs/sponsorships/media is get to meet as many people as possible or build a good profile for yourself. So why do we knock people who are trying to do this.

We want people to be brilliant but talk like they’re not. Is it because we don’t them shoving it in our face? Is it because we’re jealous? Do amazing things but don’t mention them, act like it’s nothing when others mention it to you. Fuck when I do something I’m proud of I like to talk about it. Sure I want peoples admiration, but then because of our nature I also feel bad about thinking what I did was special.

The human mind is a messed up place.

Was having a chat with a guy last weekend and we got talking to about the level of local surfing, how good it was to have all these guys around pushing themselves on these new slabs, as it would have a great knock on effect for all the younger guys. He basically just said that none of it counted as they weren’t Irish. I couldn’t believe it, he was just making one sweeping statement that dismissed a huge portion of the waves ridden in the area based on the completely random chance of where a person was born.

When I started to challenge him on it he went nuts. Started shouting about them “coming over taking our waves”, “fuck them, they weren’t born here they can fuck off”.

I just don’t get people like that, it’s straight up racism. To be honest I just felt sorry for the guy, the poor stupid fucker. Why does the place you were born have anything to do with anything? How is it relevant?

Like everyone else I get pissed off with travelling surfers who just show up, hog the waves and then leave again. But that argument has been made plenty of times before. Respect is what it’s all about.

But this guy wouldn’t even acknowledge a “foreign” surfer who has been living here for years and contributing to the local community/economy. Apparently it doesn’t count because he has a different accent. Fuck thinking about it now gets me fucking annoyed again. The guy I was talking to actually wanted us to not use the foreigners business and wanted me to “not take photos of any of them either”. Moron.

I do love Ireland, I love living here. It’s an amazingly beautiful place with great uncrowded surf, but the fact that I’m Irish means pretty much nothing to me. I’d be happy saying I was from any country. I don’t see how it matters at all.

I do hate the fact that it seems to be a little bit ingrained in all of us though, probably because of our surroundings growing up. I’ve definitely said “fucking English” before and it annoys me that I have this completely unjustified feeling in me. It’s some stupid left over feeling in our country that has nothing to do with the current generation of people who just happened to be born on the bit of land on the other side of the Irish Sea.

Anyway here’s a number of shots of surfers from all over the place.

Tom Doidge-Harrison (Not from Ireland)

Dan Skajarowski (Not from Ireland)

Tom Wimmer (Not from Ireland)

Glen Hall (Not from Ireland, but does he count because he has a passport?)

Liam Joyce (Not born here)

Silas (Not From here)

Tom Lowe (Get out of it)

… 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.