Just wanted to give a shout out to my buddy John Mancini. This spring he invited me out one morning for some stand up surfing where I grabbed this image seen above. This image and a couple others ended up in one of the opening spreads in the fall issue of the StandUp Journal which just recently hit the newsstands. It’s great to see my buddy in the mag and to see the Keweenaw getting some recognition in the surfing/standup world.
Now if only I could find myself an actual copy of the magazine.
Well, this morning I woke up to some cool news. I was going through my RSS this A.M. and to my surprise one of my surfing photos had been selected as Wend Magazine’s Friday Photo… I knew as soon as I saw “Superior Surf” in the title. Not only is this good publicity for surfing here on the Great Lakes, but I also was fortunate enough to be awarded a pair of Olukai Shoes, a GoPro Helmet Cam, and a surf board from Global Surf Industries… Crazy!
Anyway, I just wanted to give a shout out to Sam for being on the breakwall at Mclain that day and to all of the other surfers up here in the Keweenaw for getting out there, not because conditions are good, but because there are waves and surfing crappy waves is better than not surfing.
The last few days have been pretty crazy. Saturday we woke to 2-4 inches of snow on the ground and saw some pretty good conditions on the lake. Sunday it was almost 60 degrees out and I went for a road ride in and was totally comfortable in a long sleeve jersey. Yesterday, was another nice day with temps in the low 60′s. Then today it snowed… then rained… then rained and snowed. With temperature fluctuations like this we get some pretty crazy winds, and with the wind come waves. When the waves are up and everyone else is inside… that’s when the small group of freshwater surfers come out. This evening the forecast was for some pretty decent waves building through the night. So, after work I grabbed the camera and headed out to Big Traverse to see what I could see… and this is what I found.
There were a lot of photos today… so here are some of my favorites. You can see more in the gallery below. Oh… and if you’re one of the guys that was out there today and you don’t see yourself let me know. I’ll go through the files and make sure there isn’t one of you in there.
The other day I was in the book store looking through the magazines. I like to do this from time to time to check out the images in the ski, bike, and outdoor magazines that are getting published. It’s not that I’m hoping to have all of my images published, but I like knowing what the editors are looking for just in case an opportunity presents itself.
Anyway, I saw that the book store had the most recent issue of Superior Outdoorsso I grabbed a copy. Initially I only looked at the last page. I knew that an image of mine was supposed to run there in the winter issue, it was there and that’s all I needed to purchase a copy. However, imagine my surprise when I sat down to lunch and saw another of my photos in the table of contents! Apparently, another series of images I submitted were published along with an article by Conor Mihell on the Gales of November kayak confluence. And that wasn’t the end… in the reflections portion of the magazine appeared one of my surfing images of Sam Gardner.
It’s really cool seeing my stuff in print. I would say it’s because I’m so awesome, but the truth is that I really owe most of these images to Conor. He’s the one with the magic pen and without his words there would be no need for my images.
So, I know I haven’t posted anything of any substance in quite a while. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s just been super busy around these parts and I really just haven’t had the time.
I believe that I have an image in the most recent issue of Mountain Bike magazine… I’ll post more when I know for sure.
I just submitted a fairly large request to Superior Outdoors Magazine.
A representative from Digital SLR Photography in the U.K. recently contacted me about using an image in an article of theirs. That should be going to print fairly soon and hopefully I will get a copy.
Besides that we went camping in the Porkies the other weekend, I’m working on a new online retail site for Down Wind Sports – Namaste – Check it out. If you use the code “fam30″ (no quotes) you can get 30% off your entire purchase through November 15th.
I’ve also been working on the newsletters and mini-websites for IceFest and TeleFest. They really aren’t anything special. They are more or less to help make our event info a little more accessible.
As I was driving back from the Kuparisaari Triathlon the wind was just howling and I knew that there were waves in the forecast… So, I decided to take a detour on my way home and swing by Mclain State Park to see what the big lake was up to. The scene that I stumbled upon was like nothing I had ever seen before. The waves were awesome, the water was warm and there were damn near 20 people out surfing… 20! I didn’t know there were that many surfboards in all of the U.P. On top of the board surfers, which was by far the largest contingent, there was a small group of windsurfers and a solitary kite boarder.
I have to say, it is pretty sweet to see the surf community growing and it’s cool to see everyone out together enjoying the shit out of themselves. Anyway, here are a few images from the hour or so that I stayed out there. I’ve got my camera… now all I need is a board and a wetsuit.
Finally received my copies of SBC Surf in the mail today. I submitted these images a while ago and didn’t know which ones they decided to use, how many, or how big. Apparently though they thought enough of my images to give me another full spread with four 1/4 page images… pretty sweet. Also, Mr. Samuel Gardner makes an appearance in 3 of the four images, and I believe Mike Dziobak is in the other one. It’s a good thing there are a lot of cool people around here for me to take pictures of… without them I wouldn’t have much to show.
Again… the cover is not mine… my images are below.
I finally found a wordpress plugin that will allow me to change the header image on this website and gives me some amount of control. So, the other day I took a bit of time and made up some new headers, put them in the proper folder, and ta-dah… rotating header!
Anyway, I just ran through some of the images I’ve shot over the last couple of months and these are what I came up with… Well, these are the ones that seemed to fit into the long aspect ratio. What I’m wondering is what you guys think of these different images, what they say about the site, etc… Do you like them all? What’s your favorite? Should I get rid of any of them?
Right now the header is set to change on every refresh. However, the program isn’t all that great about randomly cycling through all of the images. In a couple of days I will probably change it so that it rotates every couple of minutes.
Until then, don’t hold back… leave your suggestions/critiques in the comments area below.
Well, I finally got Sam in a magazine… and a cover no less. Too bad it’s a fake.
A couple of months ago I was contacted by a fourth year design student at York University in Toronto, Steph MacDonald. One of her projects was a mockup of a small magazine, and being a surfer herself, decided to go the freshwater route. She found some of my images on Flickr, presented her case, and let me know which images she was interested in. I was more than happy to help her out.
Anyway, as it is now the end of the semester, it appears that she got everything done. The image above is from the cover of the publication and below you can see one of the inside spreads where additional images of mine were used. Here is the link to a PDF of the entire mockup.
Hopefully, sometime soon some of my surfing images will appear in actual magazine. Word on the street is it should be sometime later this month.
I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, if anyone out there is looking for a designer, it sounds like Steph is getting ready to graduate. Let me know and I’ll pass on her contact info.
This morning I had to be in Marquette at 8:30 for a photography gig. Now Marquette isn’t all that far away, but it’s not exactly close by either and I wasn’t super psyched to get up early drive down, take some photos, and then drive back. So, I decided to check the weather… and low and behold they were calling for waves.
I called Sam and we decided that it would be worth checking out. We at 7:00 in Baraga, loaded up the Jetta and got our drive on. We met up with Sam Crowley and Nancy Uschold of Sea Kayak Specialists to do some portraits for Canoe and Kayak Magazine. The session went pretty well and afterwards Sam was kind enough to show us some of the local surf spots.
At the last location we ran into Sam’s friend Steve who was also out checking the surf. He wasn’t feeling the conditions at that time so we said good-bye to Sam C. and headed to Third Street Bagel to grab a bite to eat and give the conditions some time to build. After a tasty breakfast bagel and some socializing we stopped by Steve’s place to change into wetsuits then headed back to the lake.
When we arrived it was apparent that we weren’t the only people thinking about surfing. The beach was downright over-run with surfers… a whole 7 of them. It was really cool to see the scene down Marquette. The people were super cool, the surf was good… what more could you ask for.
Anyway, here are some images from the day. At the end is a more complete slideshow. If you happen to find yourself featured in an image, let me know. I would be glad to get you a higher resolution copy.
