The Orphans Forum crew are having their annual leadership retreat in Tahoe. Former Forum regular Makoto Agnoli was kind enough to host us in the Alpine Cabin.
Makoto's also been documenting the weekend, but now that he's no longer a contributor I've been forced to shamelessly leverage his content.
So instead of 75 photos and 2 incoherent sentences, you get the following, pulled from the Agnoli Posterous:
Having long ago figured out that wide-angle lenses make every wave look the same, I dragged myself out to Fort Point yesterday to shoot a different background.
One of the old-time dick locals paddled up to me and said, "I just figured out that you're one of the most hated people in Surfing!"
"Yup," I replied. "They don't just hate me in San Francisco now."
Hey Y'all. For those of you who don't know, corporate drone Makoto has conceded in our battle for supremacy. He left this note in the comments last night:
"huh, since when did this become lewis' blog? its kind of fucked, i've lost control of my content. I've decided to stop contributing, you guys can catch me on the one and only, original, not to be duplicated, not to be copied. http://agnoli.posterous.com later"
This brings up some good points. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Was I doomed to become a megalomaniacal despot from the moment I registered this blog, therefore seizing sole admin privileges? Or did I create this blog with Ryan and Avery standing by because I am a megalomaniac?
The Orphans Forum is all about community. I think of myself as that creepy guy who runs the AA meeting, not some tyrant. (Speaking of which: New members have to share eventually. Todd, we haven't heard from you yet. Dave - ditto. The group is here to support you.)
Anyway, I'm feeling a little bit guilty about casting brother Makoto out. Was I too harsh on him? Did the power go to my head? Who is going to provide us with irrelevant techno information now? Who is going to be our unfiltered, socially inappropriate, Moth Collector? Who will regale us with stories about what the 80s were like?
I feel a void already. If Makoto won't come back to us, we must nominate a replacement. Will this guy do?
The forum has made the cut! I am a creature of habit, and nothing so reflects this as in my initial web browsing when I start up my computer. Regardless of time or day, or whether I checked 10 hours or 10 minutes before, I follow a strict regiment. Check email, do a cursory surf check/surf news on Surfline, check the wind forecast (surprisingly, regular checking does clue you into unexpected sessions), browse the news and now check the Orphans Forum. What does this mean? Well, generally emails are blase or business, Surfline is never updated, the news is depressing and the wind has been pretty sour, so Orphans Forum can save my web session. Course that fails when the last post is the one I wrote or one Lewis wrote about getting barreled. Let's hear it!
Things have turned violent in the fight for supremacy between Corporate Drones and Surf Orphans.
After much internal debate amongst high-ranking Orphans Forum officials, Giovanni Makoto Agnoli has had his account temporarily suspended. Simply put, the only unforgivable sin is to be boring. Makoto's post below crossed the line in terms of humorless office nonsense. If he'd at least used some six-sigma terminology;phrases like "value-add" "low-hanging fruit" or "synergize our efforts" I might have let it slide as ironic.
To detail the reasons for this barring more completely, Makoto has his own Blog at http://agnoli.posterous.com/
Makoto has never actually written or posted anything specifically for Orphans Forum - instead he simply checked a box and all his Posterous posts are forwarded to Orphans Forum. We don't mind the pictures of old people. What sucks is that everyone else is embracing the concept of a group blog - we're writing our posts with our Orphan audience in mind, and in response to what everyone else is posting on the blog. That's what we envisioned for this site - a reply-all vibe amongst friends.
I've placed another poll in the sidebar. It's up to you to strive for peace and vote Corporate Drone Makoto back in... or not.
hd video doesn't look so good on youtube, partly because its hard to get to the HQ version of movies. need to figure out how to get posterous to embed the hq url. here are the settings I'm using to export from 1920x1080 iMovie to youtube. there's go to be a better way.
This is shot with my favorite sigma 50mm 1.4 lens and recorded with the built in mark ii microphone. Edited in iMovie, simple cuts only edit, no audio remix. Its mostly a test of me learning how to pull focus and how the microphone performs. Overall I'm very happy with the setup.
I originally thought the auto exposure was going to be a problem, but i figured out how to lock the exposure for difficult lighting situations, and found that i don't really need to for most shots.
The built in microphone seems to work pretty well, you have to be careful to not make noise while adjusting the focus or zoom. I want to experiment with an external mike attached to maybe the hot shoe? is there such a product? it would add to the bulk of the rig, but might be worth it in some conditions.
Pulling focus is interesting, especially with such a large aperture lens. the depth of field is incredible short. I'm experimenting with moving the camera instead of the focus ring, that seems to be more natural from the viewer's perspective. One day I'll be as good as hitchcock.
Battery life is a problem. especially since everyone is out of stock on the mark ii batteries. I've been turning off the live view when not in use.
The transition between shooting movies and stills works pretty well. it takes a second or two for the camera to switch between full SLR and movie+liveview mode, but i think its worth shooting in dedicated modes rather than the combo mode in which the still performance is abominable.
The mark ii records 1920x1080 h264 QuickTime .movs at around 40mbits/s. I haven't tried the VGA mode yet, I don't expect i ever will. Interesting choice of audio sample rate. I would have chosen 48K. The .mov format is really convenient for my workflow, no conversion required. I haven't been able to find a timecode or meta data track yet, but that kind of makes sense since there's no way to set that up in the camera. There's also a thumbnail file that could be used as a proxy if necessary.
editing and blogging video is really hard. randy is right. we need to make it better. iPhoto does a good job of bringing the data in, iMovie does a good job of putting it together. but its still really difficult to tell a story. but at least it looks good when shot on the mark ii.
After fifteen attempts, new accounts, passwords, photo updates, and all that other cyber shit, I have finally entered the world of "blog"....it is a scary place. I had to chime in after reading and laughing my ass off about the cube life. It is curious this cube thing. I did 2 years of servitude, and then had my position "dissolved". It was a very strange term I thought as all I could think about during the meeting was that when I returned to my space, it was just going to be a huge pile of molting plastic and carpet. That very day I vowed never to return, and never have. I sympathize with all those serving sentences in the cube and hope you will find freedom soon. At this point I shudder to think of Lewis or John in cubes as they both would freak the fuck out, but I must admit that John B did work in a trailor for a very long time, but his trailor co-worker was a very hot blonde, so I think that is how and why he survived. However, when he finally left he did go to New Zealand and Indonesia for 6 months.....
John, Damn you and your peace keeping contingency! Bring on the war, I want Vasco's army to invade Lewis's lifestyle and turn him into the underground mail room clerk, sorting corporate paychecks 14 hours a day. In addition, let's get his same army down to Santa Cruz to turn the local surfer contingency into corporate drones. Vasco, you could have a team of people to do all your copying at your bidding! Capture enough degenerate surfers and you have a team large enough to do all your work. (historical data shows that on average 4 surfers are required to provide enough capabilities to do one average persons job. Just let me know when you are invading Santa Cruz and whisking surfers off to corporate indentured servitude. I want to make sure I am gone that weekend.
OK. Enough is enough. This back-and-forth between Surf-Junkies and Cube-Dwellers has to stop.
No One Wins. Especially if Vasco 'manages' to survive with only "K.I.N.K.O" and/or "D.I.T.T.O." tattooed from thumb(s) to pinky(s). How much more escalation can we endure? Personally, I'm completely ruined by the footage from both sides already. Such is war.
And, I realize that calling for peace is going to be as easy as brokering a cease-fire in Gaza. So in the name of reconciliation, (i) I'm not going to tell you about the amazing waves I scored up here tonight. Or, (ii) tell you about how many boxes I had running simulations in the computer lab this week (including while surfing & snowboarding). Needless to say, I respect both sides. That's what's hurting me right now. I just want us to agree on a safe Green Zone.
"How?", you may ask. I volunteer, "Music." I came home tonight to my favorite radio DJ, Michelle Meyers of KEXP.ORG. Check it out online if you don't know. Everything is streaming, and they have an impressive archive (e.g. http://kexp.org/programming/djpage.aspx?djid=319#recent). Furthermore, Seattle is sending their best radio talent to Berkeley, as well as the Make-Out Room in SF next week, with nutty-live-and-free-in-studio performances. All you have to do is sign-up.
I'm kinda like the Kala of my office. Here's a pic of me enforcing order in copy machine que and shredding on a Xerox Workcentre 7335 copier. Killer. Rad.
Inspired by Brother Vasco's incredibly depressing portrait of what it means to be a caged office drone (see post below) I have been fasting from surf for the last two days.
I have decided that until Vasco is set free I will not surf (or until the waves look fun again, whichever comes first).
Why may you ask, am I so compassionate to the horrible plight of my brother? Well, as shocking as this may seem, before I bought my freedom, I too was a corporate drone. In fact, my Fantasy Surfer handle is STILL Corporate Drone, alluding to my unfortunate past life. See photo below.
Band together Orphans. No surf until we can all surf! (Or, as I mentioned, until the surf looks even remotely fun again, whichever comes first.)
United we stand, divided we fall. I used to live here: Now I live here:
For any of you who have been following my life, you know how excited I am about the picture below. Thanks pete, thanks brandy. Now it's time to make some movies.
What can I say? Would you believe me if I said I was killing it? I see you your pictures of killer waves and raise you with a picture of me at my desk in a basement in Tribeca. PTFE, ETFE, Tenara, prestress, uplift, moments, seagulls and pigeons... is that person holding my new camera going to drop it? What? Should I call a consultant and ask them what the !@#!*%!#!!?, or just yell at my team? Totally radical. This has to end soon.
And one of my pregnant wife with car seat. Notice the high quality depth of field and awesome wide angle produced by the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 digital camera... who knew a good camera could be so much fun! My brother did! Thanks Makoto!
To see Dick Cheney make his exit like this yesterday:
But hey, we can't have everything. So watching him exit like this was pretty damn fulfilling:
At least in the wheelchair we all got to see the bitter look on Dick's face.
He may not control the deadliest military on earth anymore, but don't get too close! Old-man Cheney still might spit his Werther's Original at you, or poke you with his cane.
Its not every day that I am excited to see a group of BodyBoarders. In fact, I can't recall ever being excited about seeing Bodyboarders. After driving around for two(2) days, and surfing outer reefs, I was excited to possibly surf a spot that a group of Bodyboarders (think shorebreak) would find interesting.
So while you know all about surf spots on the Central Coast, I thought you might be interested to learn about a spot just down the road with its own signature shelf, and unique capacity for revelry....
Just finished my 7th session of the HypeSwell at still-grunting, hucking outer bars. This run of surf has pushed my body and my ever-patient significant other to the limit, but emotionally I'm feeling quite good right now, thank you.
I'm now sponsored by Advil due to the fact I've been surfing for hours a day, obsessively, since Thanksgiving (or 1991 depending upon who you talk to).
It's hard to stay away when you rock up in the morning and it looks like this: Did a bit of GoPro photo-whoring on what was supposed to be the "worst" day of the swell and got a few hook-ups. The wide-angle causes Costanza-style shrinkage to the waves, but the light was cool at least.
I also got my first-ever non-nepotism induced surf shot published, as SurferMag ran Adam Warmington's unidentified shot of me on "my" trusty 7'8". Maybe Advil will send a photo incentive?
The Beach is a notoriously fickle surf spot. Conditions come together for discrete windows, and if you're watching waves going off from the beach, chances are it will be shithouse by the time you reach the lineup.
This is usually the case with outer bar days in particular, as the tide is often only right for a couple hours of daylight. Today that was not the case, as the whole middle of the Beach went off from daybreak to sunset. Unusual tides were part of the magic equation - low in the middle of the day and never over 4'.
Yesterday, forcasted as Day 1 of the Hype Swell, was a complete clusterfuck of kooks on 9' guns riding soft, capping sleigh rides. Today was another story altogether: Big enough and mean enough to keep out most of the riff-raff. Avery and I enjoyed two sessions usually surfing a peak alone.
Here's some documentation to compare to JB's PacNW photos. Note: I'm not so worried about rubbing it in since most of our readers (Shayne excluded) are not so amped on this particular flavor of abuse.
You don't know what you have until you go without. A few of the things I enjoyed tremendously in the first 24 hrs back from sea: city food within walking distance, walking, showering in a space larger than a cramped duffle-bag, relations with the opposite sex and scoring uncrowded surf with a best friend.
Inspired by Shayne's photos during a visit last year, Jer went ahead and bought a nice camera to chronicle more surf adventures up here. I'm glad he did. We've had some amazing times surfing and exploring the last few years, but not a whole lot of evidence of the treasures uncovered.
These shots are from Friday, and hopefully there will be more to come from different breaks this season. This was a pretty typical winter session (with good conditions) in these parts: big, windy, cold and uncrowded. If you look closely in the last three wave shots, you'll see a speck that is me. It had to be me, because after Jer and the other guy got out (the only other two guys catching waves all afternoon), there was no one else in the water. The last two surf shots are the inside section, which was makeable and a much more exciting at-sea-experience than being on that ship.
The forecast is for more of the same tomorrow. But, first the girl and I are going for a walk to get some dinner and a movie. Then? You never know. But it sure is nice to be home.
