1970's Surfing Photos from Hawaii - Page 3

Ok then, here's the Waimea shots. 1973. I cannot thank Sean O'Hare enough for preserving them. It's nice to have a tangible bit of something you did too many decades ago, that you consider fair to partly significant, and without Sean's diligence, this tangible bit would not have survived. A thousand and one thanks, Sean.

These pictures were/are in pretty rough shape, having suffered the depredations of not only myself, but other people too. The originals that I scanned are very low contrast as well as fairly well nuked in the color department. An ex-wife who shall remain nameless assiduously cut them up so as to fit them into some kind of picture frame thing with pre-cut holes in it, and the years each of these shots spent in that thing caused a noticeably greater color distortion where the photo was continuously exposed to the light of day as opposed to the untrimmed parts that lay beneath the pre-cut hole mask.

So I went at 'em digitally, and tried my best to bring out the details, and rescue what little of the original color as remained, as I could.

As a result, they look more than just a little weird, but remain faithful to the original image that was captured so very many long years ago.

Me in front. As I recall, the guy behind me did not make this wave. The angle these photos were taken from is deceptive, because it looks like you're directly in front of things, looking straight at the wave as it comes right at you, but you are not. You are standing in somebody's back yard over toward the end of the point, and are looking more than just a little bit lengthwise along the line of the wave, from behind, and both riders in the frame are traveling in a direction significantly more "toward the beach" than the "down the line" direction this photo would give you to believe that they are traveling in. Bottom line: The safety of the channel, out on the shoulder of the wave, isn't nearly as "reachable" as the image makes it look.

Me in the middle. Made wave by myself and the guy ahead of me, but the guy behind never had a chance.

Took a pretty good fall on this one. That's me in the back, spinning out, board sideways, falling out of the sky. I distinctly recall the surface of the water below and in front of me being a gorgeous shade of sparkling silvery light blue as I took this fall, an instant before I reconnected with the water farther below, and started skipping and rolling down the wave face until everything finally folded over on top of me and the thrashing began in earnest. The person taking the shot said they were laughing when they took it, and that's why it's blurry. What a charming person, eh? Whatever. I bounced off the lava bottom in deep water on this one, all the way outside, but suffered no cuts or bruises as a result. You tend to remember these kinds of things in surprising detail, more or less forever.