As we race through the age of digital exactness and speed, there are some things that are becoming apparent.
People are making some great movies and that medium is still bouncing around as Vimeo and You Tube compete with the Indie film maker. Adapt or die I guess.
Photography is just sensational with great equipment ,the lower cost of having equipment that you can now go in the water with, thus the standard keeps rising.
The winner is the viewer, and so it should be.
At 6Ps we continually grapple with the indie role, but we are not movie moguls either.
We simply like to produce movies that bring a "feeling:" to the viewer -simple.
In amongst all this is also Art. In our case surf Art. A focused form of Art pursuing our passion that is surfing and its surrounds.
A magazine that always takes our eye for all of the above is "Sea Horses" which is only published each 3 months. We subscribe to a site called "switchfoot" which is a little inconsistent and one dimentional, in fact not a great site at all. Having said that it is a site to promote its book called switchfoot plus some nostalgic gear.
The latest newsletter from switchfoot had a great article about Sea Horses in it which is below and gives a grea insight into a persons passion and creative approach to bringing a first class magazine to the shelves. It also puts into perspective the nature of changing media and the niche it has found.
You are either on the 24hour Iphone updates of everything surfing or a more "escapist" type who gets lost in a book that has great articles, photos and site addresses. Or a mixture of both.
Anyway you look at it, things change, in a lot of cases for the best, but that is up to you.
Read and enjoy the article.
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George Greenough rekons it is alright and that was enough for us to buy a copy and check it out. We bought a copy in Winter and enjoyed the bit about surfboard design, the layout and the lack of industry sales editorial. So we asked the one-man-band that is Graeme Murdoch a few questions about the magazine.
1- where did the passion and idea come from to do a surfing magazine minus all the competition heroes?
GM: It’s come about from the different role mags play these days. They’re no longer the ‘hit’ of surf action or information you used to hang out for – the net takes care of that amazingly effectively. So a mag has to play a different role. The difference I want to provide is to make something so engaging that readers can kind of get lost with the mag for a while.
It’s important to strip back the usual ‘editorial voice’ and have the subjects tell their stories in a direct ‘first person’ style where possible. In a way, this borrows from the ABC’s ‘Australian Story’ series. There’s lots of work and research involved putting those stories together, but by the time they’re broadcast, there’s no announcer, no compere getting in the way of the story. If that makes sense.
The mag’s motto is ‘The Sea Has Stories’... but for a while it was a toss up between that and ‘More of the Sea, Less of Me’ (which was coined by Nathan Oldfield)... because the mag tries to have humility at its core – the less ego and more mindfulness that’s present in the pages, the more the absolute treasure of surfing, the ocean and nature will shine.
2 - how many people are working on white horses magazine and what sort of content are you currently looking for? (our readers might contact you)
Strictly speaking, far as making the horse (editing, designing, photo editing), it’s a one person affair. And even then it’s not a full time gig, (with other bill-paying work required) But the best thing about the mag is the PHENOMENAL family of contributors I work with. I’m humbled by the talent and generosity and efforts of the photographers, writers and artists. So it really is their mag.
Our next issue (out sept 7) is based around a single day (June 1, the first day of winter) and it was pretty much a shithouse day of surf on the east coast (and the rest of the planet, except for bombing Tahiti), but the 68 photographers and 46 writers turned in amazing gear.
3 - what do you see the difference between white horses and say the surfers journal?
I actually don’t look at too many surf magazines, I’d rather not have any influence creep into the back of my mind. But I reckon the Surfers’ Journal really knows what it stands for, whereas the Horse is just figuring it out! Reckon we’re doing alright though.
and If you could throw in that people can order online atwhitehorses.com.au/shop, and we send overnight at no extra charge. They have to be quick in newsagents as we hate the waste of printing more than we sell, so we don’t stack the shelves...
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ALOHA
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