Hard Work If You Try It

Monday was a truly spectacular day on the Alabama Gulf Coast. We don't normally get big waves and heavy surf. But when it happens, it is amazing! About an hour before sunset I happened to glance out and saw what I thought was a kite, although it seemed quite large for normal kite-flying, I then noticed the guy in a wet suit holding on to the lower end of the kite. What a day for Kitesurfing! Winds up to 35 miles per hour! Needless to say I grabbed the camera and my wife watched an amazing display of athletic ability.

(Above) You get a good idea of the size of the kite- and the small size of the person. Amazing.

(Below) The waves were rolling and this guy was making the best of it, while holding on for dear life, I am sure.

I was never sure if the kite pulled him up off the water or whether he kind of jumped up. It didn't make much difference- he was doing somersaults while the kite just pulled him.

I don't know how long he had been playing in the surf when I first saw him, but there is 45 minutes between the first picture above and the one below. Needless to say he was pulled quite a way west on the beach. He was not walking very fast.

Earlier I got this picture of him as he surfed a few feet off shore. I cropped in close to show the Great Blue Heron sitting there calmly watching this crazy human.

Hey, when we don't have wings, we have to do with what we got.

Yep! Another Video

I have been working hard this past month on my video editing skills. Most of the videos have been simple. A little editing here and there, add a few cross-dissolves, find some music to fit and Voila! A video.

Today's was one I worked on for a while. I had a lot of video from a major heavy surf event the other week. I knew I wanted to do this one more story-like. It didn't need to be a linear-based video. It was to be a video about the ocean (Gulf of Mexico) and us. I dug through my music and found three pieces to put together to make it about six minutes in length. I then did an outline of the raw video, edited what I had to snippets totaling about 12 minutes. From there it was fitting the right stuff to the music.

Back in the old days of multi-media slide shows (read: predecessors of PowerPoint with soundtracks) we used to say it takes about an hour of production time for each final minute of product. For this video I would say that is probably true.

Anyway, here's the finished product. As usual, enjoy!

A Half-Day View

I started the time-lapse a little after noon. Here's an edited version of the clouds, sand and surf for a half day on the Gulf of Mexico. There is always something mystical about the surf and movement of water.