So, we’ve established that people who have based their lives on surf photography are screwed.  Enough of the bitching, time to move on.  I’m a huge fan anything that moves the genre of surfing art forward and despite all the bad news in the media industry, I’m still optimistic.  Here are a few examples of new approaches and technologies that will be merging the surf photographer with the surf videographer to form the Surf Media Extraordinaire.  

If you live on the East Coast and not under a rock, you probably have heard that Alex DePhillipo is making one of the first surf videos fully filmed in HD.  I’m not 100% sure if its the first of its kind as far as technology goes, but it sure as hell is a big step forward.  The days of crappy footage in crappy waves may be over, thank god. If you’re from Jersey, you may remember What Exit?  Surely you remember the awful yet laughable quality of the old …Lost videos?   We are entering a new Renaissance as far as surf videos go.  While choppy editing and typical ‘surf smut’ will still always sell, as an audience we are realizing that there is more to it than just adding a new grab or updating a soundtrack.  Videos like One Track Mind actually are beginning to tell a story.  Jack Macoy, famous for his Aussie brand of 80′s surf porn, broke his own tradition and created an intriguing documentary with Blue Horizon which managed to combine high quality footage, amazing surfing and an actual story.  Personally, I’m very glad to see that surf cinematographers are also acting as directors who try to convey a message or story rather than just being a monkey who moves a tripod and presses the record button.

Every year, there is an abundance of new technology created that flies under the radar to most people.  You may not realize the product that you see has been created with new tools that are nearly revolutionizing the old way of creation.  Recently, Canon introduced its new pro-sumer DSLR still photo camera, called the Canon 5D Mark II.  This camera has a feature which makes it truly special compared to all other still photo cameras – it records video at full HD 1080p resolution.  On the surface, this means that you can shoot still photos, or high quality video using the exact same camera and lenses.  This alone is a great convenience, but the true benefit of this system is more than just convenience.  

First, by shooting onto a sensor the size of 35mm film, there is an abundance of visual information that is being recorded for each frame.  This means that the quality of the raw footage (before it is compressed to HD size) rivals that of the film used to shoot full feature movies.  This large sensor also allows for the cinematographer to shoot in extremely low light situations – like a dark Outer Banks barrel – with very few issues with digital noise or motion blur.  Furthermore, by shooting with lenses designed to be tack sharp at a resolution 20x that of HD video, the resulting compressed footage is sharper than nearly any other product on the market.  In effect, you are getting the quality of a 35mm film cinema camera – which is priced with six digits and weighs hundreds of pounds – for less than $2,500 and fits comfortably in the palm of your hand.

The classic example of the Canon 5D Mark II video is a short demo film by photographer Vincent Laforet titled Reverie which showcases all the features discussed above like sharpness, low light shooting and portability.  He is able to shoot hanging out the side of a helicopter over manhattan with nothing more than a seatbelt while hand holding the camera.  Although this is by far the most cinematic piece of footage I’ve seen so far shot with the Mark II, other videos truly showcase the advantage of the portability even better.  For example, the following video shot in the hand of a snowboarder opens up the idea of taking this camera in an underwater housing in the ocean. 

Powder Mountain Perspective from Ian Provo.

If Jack McCoy could get in the barrel with his mamoth camera, imagine the possibilities when a nut like Tim Jones goes swimming with one.  Better yet, when we replace the stills in this series by Tim McKenna with HD video…

Manoa Drollet Self Portrait © Tim McKenna

One last piece of tech that I wanted to share is the Red One camera.  Without going into all the nerdy details, basically this is a video camera that shoots at an extremely high resolution – quality enough to use ‘frame grabs’ as still photos.  This means that the video shot during the swell of the century will not only be on Surfline within a day, but also be able to be on the big screen for the new Poor Specimen premiere, as well as the cover of Surfing.  All this from the same camera and same raw footage.  This technology was featured this week when used to shoot the new cover of Esquire magazine.  Photographer Greg Williams shot 10 minutes of footage featuring Megan Fox doing some posing while unexpectedly dressed in a sexy outfit.  From this video, they selected stills and ultimately chose one for the to-be-released June cover.  Not only do they have the cover photo, but they also have the video that is typical of a ‘behind the scenes’ production all in one neat little package.  

So, in closing, I’m pretty excited about the future of surf media.  While it sucks that the magazine industry is going down, and the likelihood of being able to survive as just a ‘surf photographer’ is extremely slim, there is a good chance that with a little luck and a lot of R&D, we former photogs might be able to again make ends meet.  Heres to the end of bland surf porn and towards the progression in surf art…