Living for Light » kitesurfing

Kitesurferama

Treasa — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:38:23 +0000

I discovered the other day that I had done the first photograph of this ilk way back in 2007 on a photograph that I liked a lot at the time but had forgotten about. This is from yesterday too.

Have had a productive morning doing stuff like packing a camera bag for a top secret trip (we’ll know later in the week whether it was even remotely successful – but if it is I will be a truly happy person). One of the things I wanted to do was look at some photographs by Mickey Smith again – I’m angling up to purchase one myself which seems crazy when you bear in mind that I have plenty of photographs of my own, so many that I can actually forget some of them exist. But there was a great one in Spring’s Tonnta. I wish he’d sort out his website.

On balance, while I haven’t taken that many photographs this year, I got some nice ones, and at least six that I’m more than pleased to see adorning my own walls. Two are already there; taken in Cork, and two more from Clare are due to arrive shortly. There’s a third one from Clare to come but I want to print it on very high gloss paper. I’d have to say this year is definitely a better year for me than last year was, even given the comparative lack of activity.

Makes me smile anyway

Martti

Treasa — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 19:50:09 +0000

I hope I spelled his name right. I’m not good with Estonian.

In theory – because theory is a wonderful thing – I was planning on being in New York with the ASP event today. That didn’t work out according to plan for so many reasons it’s not funny. Instead I have crashed out in Dublin for a week doing Stuff. Important Stuff. Paperwork Stuff.

Today involved a lot of that stuff but at lunch time, I looked at the windmeter on Dun Laoghaire, picked up my camera and abandoned it all to hell. I took 150 photographs which isn’t loads but to be honest, I had other things on my mind. Dublin had some modicum of waves today and while I’d no great desire to try and play with the erratic wind, I did have a mind to go and get my bodyboard. For the first time in months I abandoned the camera in favour of sports. Can’t remember the last time that happened.

I haven’t really worked out which photographs I liked most.

but there are some nice things. Things that leave nice marks on my soul. With lots of people smiling.

Like so.

In other great news I got a Present today, a book called True which is a history of the first 10 years of North Kiteboarding. I didn’t know it existed until today, and once I found about about it, I had to have it. There are some fantastic photographs in it – in a way I’m sorry I didn’t have it when I was talking to Dublin Camera Club a few weeks ago. If you have a while free I strongly recommend you have a look at Christoph Maderer’s kitesurfing gallery which I will helpfully link to here. There are things in there that I would kill to do. I need some lighting solutions.

Yesterday I handed a disposable camera full of photographs of teddybears to Ronan Palliser of DCC for a disposable camera thing. I have no idea how the photos are going to shape out; I have never played with single use cameras and in the past when I have used compact cameras, I’d used them enough to predict with some accuracy what the outcome would look like.

I haven’t been taking a lot of photographs this year, and very, very few sports photographs it has to be said. When you have a day like today, you know, it gets to be worth it.

I’m going to be mad stiff tomorrow thanks to the bodyboarding though. Ouch.

Board grab.

Treasa — Sun, 29 May 2011 17:50:56 +0000

The Battle for the Bay was on in Dublin this weekend. Normally I’d be down there but this weekend I had too many other things on. So I went to the party last night and spent a couple of hours on the beach. I still got more than 250 photographs to sort through. Most of them were of Colly Murphy.

Colly is one of the people I know longest on the kitesurfing scene. Over the past 8 years, he has featured in some of my favourite photographs and he is an all round really nice guy too. I have some lovely photographs of him from today, including some action shots from the water. Photographs like this make me happy and I think/hope they make kitesurfers happy too.

Because I missed most of the action this weekend, I wasn’t completely swamped in photographs (250 is definitely a lot less than the 1000 a day I used to shoot at competitions).

There was a brilliant atmosphere on the beach, and a large number of the few people who braved the wind down there this year spent their time at the water’s edge, just watching. Check this out:

I’d love it if Dollymount could look like this all the time. That sand is almost Caribbean-esque in colour. Well, except the bit that used to be wet. There was a comparatively low tide there this afternoon. I don’t like shooting low tide so much. But look at the colour of the water too. That’s almost Mediterranean-esque.

During that recent television interview, something which I said but which got cut from the final piece was that I genuinely felt we who lived in Dublin were really lucky to have access to some beautiful beaches, not that far from the city centre. Dollymount and Poolbeg beaches are practically city centre in their own right; Sandymount isn’t exactly far off either and they are all lovely beaches. Today, the water on Dollymount was sparklingly clear. I don’t think I’d ever seen it just so crystalline.

Because I missed most of the show this weekend, I missed out on some very cool wipeouts too. I like this however – the water is glittering. Not absolutely certain who is buried under there but I think it might be Eamon Armstrong. Not absolutely certain because the board looks wrong.

Dear Andy, another 8 or so minutes and that’ll be my 15 minutes…

Treasa — Tue, 24 May 2011 21:00:42 +0000

Michael Schitzhofer in Portimao a couple of years ago at a PKRA invitational. I always liked this shot – this is going to sound grotesque but it was the detail of his open mouth. Pretty sure I couldn’t do this. A lot of work went into turning what was a fairly average colour shot into this. It’s one of my favourite photographs; always has been and I can’t see that changing any time soon.

Anyway.

Capital D ran a special on photographers in the Dublin area last week – you’ll know about this because I wrote about it a few weeks ago. You can currently catch it on RTE Player here – I am told you’ll find me about 14 minutes in (I did not count myself). I don’t know if this is available for you if you are outside Ireland – I think there may be a region lock (sorry )

I didn’t see any of it before I aired. But odd little things came out of it. People recognised me. I was at the Adventure Show on Saturday and people said “oh yeah there was that great photographer on the telly on Thursday – oh wait – that was you, wasn’t it?”. Famous, ma. I got a couple of rounds of applause at work on Friday as it was replayed on RTE Player a couple of times. And I got al ot of text messages and emails and phone calls and twitter. Apparently I’m very smiley on the television, and I gave a good account of myself. I think I sounded like a dork – a bit anyway – but most people think that the first time they hear their voice. And it’s really strange looking at yourself on television for the first time.

I know no one is going to really care about this but the necklace I was wearing – which doesn’t look spectacular – is one I made myself. It features a tiny piece of seaglass which I found on Golden Strand in Achill Island and I chose to wear it because it was something of myself and Golden Strand is a beautiful kite beach. Plus, I was actually sort of nervous.

Andy Warhol had this “everyone will be famous for 15 minutes” meme (well that’s how I understood it – I am open to recognition that I may have been wrong about the exact concept). I reckon the internet changes the balance a little (particularly Youtube). But if you’d asked me 20 years ago as I left school to go to college whether I saw myself being on television for any reason other than flashing a guitar around the place, I’d have laughed. I certainly wouldn’t have seen it happening because I was a photographer anyway. And I used to write fairly miserable songs when I did my girl singer/songwriter phase.

So. Firstly. Few people to give the nod to here:

Philip Bromwell put the piece together, did the leading questions in the interview, told me I was mad when he saw me wading around water on Dollymount for the first time. Michael Mac Suibhne did some of the camera work on the kitesurfers.
The kite community in Dublin who act as my models so often. Francois and Catherine at Pure Magic whose arrived on the beach around the same time as I did. Anyone connected with Pure Magic – and there have been quite a few over the years.
Declan who gave me my first/only lesson in a darkroom. All the stuff I can do now…I’m glad I don’t have to try and do it with chemicals.
Colm Murphy who was the first identifiable kitesurfer I photographed, nearly 8 years ago. Alexis Ledoux who pretty much – by dint of trying to teach me to fly a kite on regularly wind free days – introduced me to a bunch of people on the beach. Kieran Sammon. All the crew I’d call the oldies, like Brian Magee and Kieran Sammon. From the first time on the beach.
Sean and Dermot and Ross
Erich at the PKRA.
All the people in the IKSA who’ve been helpful over the years. Particularly the ones who chose to give me some rather beautiful jewellery a while back.
Tanja in Tarifa, Julien whom I met in Australia at some stage who was the first person to literally beg for a photograph. I haven’t met him since.
Tony, Andrew, Cillin, Conskee, Eamon, Dominika, Finn, Sasha, Karl, Carl, Martin, Mark, Ryan.
Bryan Elkus and Pieter ten Broek in North Carolina and New Zealand whom I’ve never met but have learned a huge amount from via flickr and the social web. Thanks a lot guys.
Sigma for some fairly robust lenses. Hahnel for fixing the biggie when I dropped it a few years ago.

I’m very lucky. I got an opportunity to do very fun stuff that I couldn’t have imagined when I was 18 years old. In fact, I couldn’t have imagined it when I was 28 years old. It got me to Brazil, to western Sahara. It has cost me a fortune that could have been spent on a grand piano but somehow I don’t quite need the piano so much any more…

More kitesurfing and just why RTE were floating around…

Treasa — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:35:55 +0000

I think this might be my favourite from Good Friday. It’s not a perfect photograph (I can confirm, for example, that C has ankles for the most part), but there’s just something about it, a bit atmospheric. Photographers like it. Kitesurfers will want to know why he’s not doing a trick. I think this might be getting back on the board just after he almost landed on me. There’s the trick. He’s still alive after I had to run to avoid him and the spray.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, somewhat unexpectedly (as in most of my email comes from LinkedIn), I got an email from someone called Philip Bromwell in RTE (Hi Philip) to see if I’d be interested in being the subject of a featurette on a magazine program on RTE called Capital D. Generally the program concentrates on Dublin specific subjects, and in this case, the Dublin specific subject was this crazy girl based in Dublin who went into the water to talk photographs of kitesurfers. He didn’t quite put it that way, of course. But I’m aware of the reality. I go in the water to take photogarphs of kitesurfers; it’s hard to describe that as totally normal. I mean, where’s the GAA in that?

So we didn’t get much in the way of cooperation from the weather because Philip wanted pictures of Me, standing in the water, taking photographs of kitesurfers. This opened up the possibility of me having to do all that in a wetsuit and I have to tell you that there is no way of making this even remotely fashionable so I was resigned to the probability of looking like a gimp in some neoprene. Fortunately the weather – and especially the water – was warm so plan A was shelved and I took the old jeans route instead. That tends to be better because jeans have pockets for things like car keys and iPhones where wetsuits do not. Useful items like spare batteries and CF cards. Not that I actually needed either, but just in case….

I’ve never been near TV before. I think I sang on the radio in a church choir when I was about 13 but apart from that…not much really. And more often than not, I’m behind cameras and not in front of them. So I’m not exactly used to being the centre of attention.

When Philip got to the beach first, I’m not sure he realised that when I said I went into the water, I actually did mean I went into the water. I’ve been in the water chest height although not on this occasion (Dollymount doesn’t really fit for that to be honest and as luck would have it, we didn’t have much suitable for Sutton anyway). It really didn’t take him long to confirm that yes, I really am that mad, and I really am this crazy girl who goes into the water to take photographs. On Friday, I did lots of taking photographs from the water, ran when kites nearly landed on me a couple of times. What I do is not without risk.

Amongst the risks I hadn’t previously considered was the risk of having to give a television interview. I got to do that today. This meant doing stuff I’m not used to doing, which includes, for example, talking about myself, talking to trees in the distance, talking to the hand. It also involved answering questions. Not since my oral tests for my interpreting diploma did I face questions with such trepidation.

Some were easy. Like “How long have you been doing this?” Five years, girl and woman. It’s a long time to be hanging around with the coolest dudes in the city.

Some were hard. I had to fudge them. Like “Why do you do this?”

The wrong answer is definitely “I don’t know”. Unfortunately, as answers go, that’s probably the closest one to the truth. I really don’t know in two words what makes me get up, drive to Dollymount, get soaking wet and hope that somewhere, I got a photograph that didn’t have a layer of salt on top of it. Those ones, they suck to clean up.

I’ve got great things from this activity. The kitesurfing community in Ireland are fantastic and very welcoming. They like photographs and they’re really, really sweet people. I have travelled to some places I might not have gone to otherwise like Western Sahara, Portugal in the height of summer (normally I’d avoid that), bits of France, Australia and Spain. And I’ve learned to kitesurf a bit myself.

I’ve taken photographs of some of the best kitesurfers in Ireland both here and abroad. I think – although I’d have to check – I’ve taken photographs of 6 world champions. That’s some achievement for someone who is not a pro photographer and who spends most of her time in a place that world champions are not.

I can’t remember the rest of the questions and I hope that my answers did not sound too fragmented and disjointed.I also hope I looked reasonably respectable. There wasn’t hair and make up except what I managed to do and I have to confess I hate wearing make up – I’m convinced I look 10 years younger than I am precisely because I haven’t worn much of the stuff.

Sutton looked beautiful today. The tide was out so quite a lot of the beach was open to the air as opposed to covered in water. If there had been any wind – and there was precious little – it would have been a superb day to take photographs of kitesurfers, for whatever reason it is that I take the things.

This is Susie Mai taken the last time I was in Sutton. Since I spent a lot of the day being told where to stand and look, and all that sort of stuff that usually happens when when you’re the photographee, I thought I’d also post an image of someone who’s far better at it than I am.

Back on the beach

Treasa — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:01:50 +0000

For reasons which I am not sure I can go into at the moment, I was back on the beach with the camera yesterday. It’s about 6 months since I was shooting kitesurfers and maybe I needed a day like yesterday.

This is my friend Mr T, on his brand new board, the Monk. It’s designed by a former world champion, a guy called Mark Shinn and by some distance it’s the best graphic I’ve seen on a kiteboard. Ever. I mean, it beats a few of the F-Ones and god knows their skeletons were good. And some of the Undergrounds; they were pretty attractive too.

Yesterday was a funny kind of day. I was waiting around for another cameraman to come and join me for a project he had on the go so we missed some of the sunshine. The weather swished and swashed a bit on us but when I got to the beach, it was a steady 16knots, and if I hadn’t happened to be doing some shooting, in reality, it probably wasn’t a bad day for me to go back body dragging and finally get my act together. Tomorrow morning I may take out the kite and pump it up to check it’s okay. As far as I know there are no thistles in the lawn.

I think this might be the best of the photographs I got yesterday anyways.

Okay, on to other news.

have a look at Sean Davey’s surf photography here; I think it’s really cool.
And Clark Little has a lovely shot from this morning I think (where morning is relative as he is in Hawaii and I am not. That link, by the way, goes to the pantheon of awfulness that is FaceBook, however, it’s where he posts new shots so there you have it.
Although they typically don’t welcome non-surf photographers (ie kite specialistsi) to pitch photos to them, Club of the Waves is unquestionably one of the best collections of surf photography on the web and you should have a look here. In particular, look at Roger Sharp’s selection. I like one of those in particular but can’t find a direct link to it.

So much for the waterstuff, during the week I went to see Steve McCurry’s exhibition in the Gallery of Photography in Temple Bar in Dublin. I’m not really that into documentary photography and claim to be perfectly useless at it. However, do make time to go and see it as it’s rather startling.

I didn’t quite read many of the photographs the same way he did and one thing that really and truly struck me was that the expression in the eyes of most of his subjects left me very uneasy. One of the thoughts that went through my mind is that there are times that photography can be very invasive and some of those shots; some of those expressions left me with that thought going through my head; the ideas about people who didn’t like their likeness being taken…all washed out in a feeling that while there’s a wider benefit to documentary photographs like these, there may be individual costs.

Paracuru, Brazil/Francois Colussi

Treasa — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:47:04 +0000

I can’t see any evidence that I actually posted this here which surprises me because again, it’s one of the best kite photographs I’ve ever taken. It was taken with the last 40D and it might be the best photograph I ever took with that camera. Possibly it’s no coincidence that 10 minutes later, the camera was dead, never to take another photograph.

I love this photograph; there’s so much energy and stuff coming out of and I love the colours in it.

2007 – Guincho WaveMasters

Treasa — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 16:28:13 +0000

Feeling a little lost lately. This seems to be the normal state of affairs for me.

Anyway I was going through the archives to see if I could find any nice photographs of surfing (I couldn’t, or at least they just weren’t talking to me) but the last really good surf photography session I did was in Guincho just before they got enough wind to run some waveriding. I actually have a picture of Kirsty Jones surfing that day which isn’t too bad I guess.

They didn’t get around to running any waveriding that day until it was practically sunset, hence the really lovely warm colours in this. I’m actually surprised that this didn’t catch my attention the last time I looked at this set of photographs 3 years ago because looking at it now, all I can think is “I really, really want this on my wall”.

There’s a photograph of children fishing in Madagascar that Philippe Plisson did a few years ago which I saw in an exhibition in London about 2 years ago which was, for the first time in a long time, the only photograph that I really and truly wished I had 5000E to spend on. It was something about the warmth of the colours that did it for me. I remember talking to the promoter of the exhibition and she said exactly the same thing; it was the colour palette of the photograph did it for her, and, I think, also for me, the way the sun reflected on the water through the fishing net.

I get that same feeling looking at the sun reflecting through the wake of the board on this. It really is singing to me in a way that not so many photographs have lately. I have spent a good deal of today and yesterday looking at surf photographs, looking for something really special and although there are a few Clark Little’s that I would like, none of them are thumping my heart like this. It’s a hard search sometimes and it’s even harder to describe why it is one photograph – like this one – works, and one, taken in near identical conditions a second or two later. We’re not even talking about catching or missing a trick here.

I have a handful of photographs printed very large. I’m looking at this and thinking canvas. I have nowhere to hang these things but…dammit I really and truly love this one.

standing off the shore

Treasa — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 19:38:36 +0000

On the beach are about 15 kitesurfers, pumping kites, talking about what size they’ll put up, who’s going to try the new 2011 Cabrinhas. The kites are pretty. The two Cabrinha team riders are on the beach. The weather is hugely different to what they are used to; Susie tells me she spends most of her time in the Dominican Republic, Cameron tells me he’s from Hawaii. He points out it rains there too.

But I only ever see the sun shining there. I want to go to Hawaii sometime; would love to see Pipeline some time.

For now, however, it’s Sutton, Dublin, and I’m sure that for some people, that’s exotic enough. Different, at least, and today, September day, the sun is shining. That matters a whole lot to me. It’s easier to do crazy things when the sun is shining.

Like ask the muse “do you have enough wind to jump over me today?”

He doubts it but points out Susie probably has. I’m nervous. I’ve never photographed her before, have no idea what to expect when she gets in the water. But she’s game to give it a shot, if I will. So I do. I go and pull on a 5mm windsurfing suit, and the walk from the car to the beach, well it’s warm; not surprisingly, because the sun is shining very brightly. Welcome, but warm in a 5mm wetsuit, out of the water. It won’t last long; I know this. I’ve done this already. Before. It never stays warm.

I can never imagine what it looks like, this crazy girl in a wetsuit, and 1600E worth of unprotected camera gear around her neck, walking out into the sea. It’s a measure of people’s relative risk assessment skills that even the kitesurfers think I am certifiably insane. Sometimes I have a helmet with me too; I got that because Francois Colussi insisted on it when I started doing this. This time, however, because I wasn’t supposed to do this; it wasn’t part of the plan, I didn’t have the helmet. But that didn’t really matter because Susie has wake bindings. Her board is unlikely to come flying at me unless she’s coming with it too. And that would be some sight to see. And shoot. And hope the memory card survives.

You’ve no idea what it’s like, however, when you walk out into the middle of the sea, water about a metre to 1.25 deep around you. Your senses change. Camera is held completely to your chest, lens pointing up, your back is to where the waves are coming from you. And the sound drops right off. All you really hear is the water lapping around you. From somewhere you learn to know when to hold the camera way over your head to protect it from a rogue wave.

The aeroplanes flying overhead, on their way to Dublin Airport, are curiously silent. You cannot hear the DART trains on their way to Howth. Even the voices on the beach that you expect to carry over the water to you…are curiously deadened. I don’t notice them. I don’t even notice any seabirds which may be flying around. There’s just me, some waves, and occasionally, the whoosh of the wake of a kiteboard as it passes.

You might just hear a yelp of joy, or pain as someone lands, or crashes on a jump. Or the thwack of a kite crashing heavily on the water following a wipe out. But mostly it’s quiet. And a strange kind of lonesomeness.

People wave at me as they pass. On occasion, someone will speak to me. But their voices are almost like ambulances; the sound disappears almost faster than they do.

Someone told me today that they assumed I shot from a boat.

I don’t. But that’s the shore I walked from to take this shot.

I love what I do. On days that the sun shines; that I come away with some special things, things that I know you have to work to get, work out how to get – you will never know how much time I spent pouring over wide angle shots of everything to learn how to see through that lens, how much time I spend watching people cruising up and down, not even jumping, working out how to take these shots – I love what I do.

Every single hour I spent on the beaches of Ireland learning how to do this, how to judge the risks to me and to my camera (and yes, I have lost a camera to this) comes down to maybe 20 photographs that even now still blow my mind and the hope, the massive hope that it’s not all over yet. That there are still other pictures, other beaches out there to shoot.

This is what I do…

Treasa — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 19:58:08 +0000

This is my favourite shot from yesterday. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

after all I chopped the top of the kite off. But I don’t really care. There’s just something about it I love.

The photograph was taken in Sutton, Co. Dublin, Ireland. In a way, it’s the culmination of years of work, waiting, hoping. You stand in the centre of the channel on a receding tide, preferably in a N or NE wind. Yesterday it was a scrappy westerly but okay, I can’t complain. I got the sunshine which made it pleasant. I bought the wide angle specifically for this kind of day like 3 years ago. I’ve spent months and years trying to get Francois Colussi to jump over me. Yesterday he did:

Last time he tried this in Paracuru in Brazil I wound up minus a 40D.

This one is going down well with my cameraish friends as well:

This is Susie Mai who is one of the best kitesurfers in the world.

I had a lot of fun with her. I also have to give her credit for going in the cold, cold Irish water. I stood in it for 3 hours yesterday. Even for me, it was not warm.

I got quite a few photographs yesterday. Hopefully a few more to come over the next couple of days.