- Time Capsule -
MacLaren's 1970's Hawaii Photos
from the North Shore of Oahu
Page 2: The Waimea Photos - Image 2
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Behold, the wonders which poor treatment of old photographs can accomplish!
These pictures are all in pretty rough shape, but I think this one is the worst of the bunch. The originals that I scanned are very low contrast as well as being completely cooked with serious color-cast damage. And most of the damage you're seeing was done at the hands of one of those aggressively incompetent individuals who goes right at things, with utmost confidence, despite having no clue whatsoever as to the actual consequences of their actions. I'm sure you've met many of your own examples of the species yourself, during the course of your life. An ex-wife who shall remain nameless assiduously cut many of them up, so as to fit them into some kind of picture frame mask 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. And yes, I completely freaked out when what was done was sprung on me without advance warning, and I suppose I could have snatched the damn thing off the wall, then and there, but... she was, after all, my wife at the time, and in the end I found out all too well what she was really made of, but at the time, I chose not to add to my already more-than-sufficient woes in the situation I found myself immersed in, and instead, I just let it roll, for right or for wrong, for well or for ill.
Such are the twists and turns of one's life.
On this image, you can clearly see the outline of the hole in the mask, via which an attempt was made, that did not quite succeed, to level the horizon, through which this photograph took the brunt of its years-long light-exposure damage. Additional damage in the form of what appears to be some kind of glue or adhesive the photo was subjected to, in order to fasten it in place, which seems to have been smeared from wherever it started out behind the mask, over to a location where the photo was visible through the mask, is also clearly evident. Further, completely unidentifiable, damage can be found elsewhere, all over the place, too. Physical insult, and a host of other mysterious degradations which I will never in my life be able to figure out, complete the array.
I have spent more time on this one single image, attempting to restore it, than any other old photograph (of which there are plenty) in my entire collection of them.
Without success.
Maybe you can do a better job with it. Maybe give it a go. Why not? Go ahead and click for the enlargement and download it and see what you can do with it. I'd be the happiest person in the world to see this image brought back to life in better shape than my own very-limited talents have been able to.
And in the end, I decided just to render it in Black & White, and try to tone down the worst of the damage where at-all possible, and maybe bring up the contrast around the four people who are visible on this wave so you can see them a little better, and here you go, here it is, in somewhat easier form to make sense of.
I'm the rider in the middle. And although it looks like I'm only half the size of the riders on either side of me, that's just an artifact of my being folded-over in a deep flex all along the length of my body during the split-second this photograph was taken, neck to ankles, getting low, getting my center of gravity down low, trying to gain as much spring-return as might suddenly become necessary, for pushing down hard on the board as the spring is released in an effort to keep it under control, as it was carrying me ever-deeper into the life-threatening situation developing all around me at lightning-fast speed, in addition to the simple fact that this is a lousy photograph, and is of exceptionally poor quality.
As mentioned at the bottom of the previous page, this wave is not shouldering off, and instead presents itself as a sensible wall, from one side to the other. And when you're down there getting towards the bottom of a thing like that, seeing all that water out there above you and ahead of you, getting ready to come over, you become very motivated, to stay on top of the surfboard and make the wave. And thus the deeply-folded stance in this image.
On the extreme left, along the top margin of the wave, a bit of a disturbance in the shape of the top edge of the wall, along with a bit of whitened water, betrays the hidden presence of a paddler who has just disappeared from view going down over the back of the wave, getting the hell out of harm's way, as this thing came steaming in from outside with malice in its heart.
Below and to the right of that, right on the line where the worst of the light-exposure damage starts, another paddler can be seen leaving a clearly-visible wake, paddling furiously to get over the top of a not-small wave, which is already starting to feather malevolently in front of him and above him. He did not get caught by the lip which is rapidly coalescing, and he did not go over the falls and land on top of anybody. He had a good day, this day. Or at least on this wave he did, anyway.
A lot of people sit over there off to the side. A lot of people sit farther inside, away from the focus of things where the largest waves are infrequently coming over, farther outside. A lot of people tend to shy back, just a little bit, from the main focus of the largest energy release. And I'm not sure why. That's a great way to get cleaned up. To endure the very worst that the place has to offer, with a slab-thick lip avalanching down out of the sky above you like a steam locomotive dropped off the top of the Empire State Building, aimed directly at you. To take one of the worst beatings you'll ever take in your life in a nightmare ultra-long-holddown wipeout that not everybody, not every single time, has successfully made it back to the surface from. Once in a very great while, somebody does not make it. One of those every twenty to forty minutes dark-fuming-monstrosities that rears up in the near distance with cold death in its eyes, and folds over on everybody and every thing so unfortunate as to be in front of it. And being "off to the side" doesn't help at all. Those things not only break farther outside, they also break farther across, toward the channel. And of course, once in a great while, they act like there's no channel there at all. Not good. Not good at all.
To my way of thinking, if I'm going to place myself at risk of enduring the very worst that a place has to offer, well then goddamnit, at least let me be riding the damn thing when it gets me.
You get dealt the same cards, either way, but if you're caught inside, that's that, and you're going to be taking it. But if you're dropping in on it, well then, you at least stand a fighting chance of making it. Of surviving it unscathed, pulling out and across the unbroken back of the wave as it softens down into the safety of deep water over there in the channel.
But clearly, not everybody else looks at it that way, so... I dunno. Just one of my own personal quirks, I guess.
Which brings us, in the image above, to the middle rider on this wave, Mister James "Personal Quirks" MacLaren.
Folded low, not giving a rat's ass about what he might look like and instead, doing his dead-level best to simply make the damn wave.
Which, on this occasion, he did.
But not always. Not every single time. More on that, in a bit.
There is a rider out there ahead of me on this wave, which illustrates nicely the amount of open space there is on the face of the wave at Waimea. More than enough room for everybody, on most occasions. Which is not the normal turn of affairs at most surfspots, and is enhanced by the fact that your ride at Waimea is over in a hurry, and before any two (or more) people might be given enough time to start interfering with each other, the wave is already backing off, and you're already either out in front of it on the low fat part that fades out into the channel, or farther back there somewhere dealing with a LOT of whitewater, and in neither instance will you be doing very much redirecting, and instead, lines once taken will tend to be held, until the ride is over.
And remember on the previous page where I mentioned in the title text for the image up on top of the page that "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."?
Well..... we're getting another excellent look at that effect with the image up on top of this page, too.
In particular, the guy who's back there behind me. Give that guy a good close looking-at, how 'bout?
Whoa!
Grace under pressure, personified.
He doesn't stand a chance.
And yet there he is, looking cool, calm, and collected, even as that lip is hovering menacingly out there above him and in front of him.
Which is all well and good, and I applaud his efforts in such an impossible location, but for the purpose of illustrating the point I just made, the one about the angle the photograph was taken from, make careful note of the position and orientation of his surfboard.
He's less than half-way down the face of a wave which is so steep, so close to breaking, as to have already formed an unpleasantly-thick lip well out down the line ahead of him.
So he's on steep water.
Of that, there can be no doubt. None in the slightest.
And when you're on steep water at Waimea, you're NOT headed in any direction down-the-line at all.
Nope. Not gonna happen.
You're headed straight down.
Every time.
'Cause if you're not headed straight down, the board is going to come loose from the face of the wave in a particularly-nasty spinout from way up high, and you're going to be taking a fall.
And our intrepid third rider on this wave is in the process of doing no such thing (although the wave, very much, did get him, before it was all said and done).
Which means that the board he's standing on is going down, and not across, no matter what your lying eyes might be telling you to the contrary, and that can only happen if we're looking at him from a pretty good angle, behind him, making it look like he's already trimming across the wall, which he's not.
We'll get into what happens if you try to point the board down the line from the position this guy's in, in just a minute here, ok?
Bottom line: He's still firmly-attached to the face of the wave, so he cannot be in any kind of down-the-line trim, partial or otherwise.
He's headed straight down, taking the drop.
At Waimea.
And if you don't believe me, well then, fair enough, who can blame you, but let's go look at the next picture, which, although it's blurry in the extreme, still manages to somehow give us an excellent view of what happens when the board gets too much of an angle, too soon, before you've finished taking the drop.
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