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Hammer Down

Usually in my weekly write ups I like to try pick a topic and write something thought provoking about it. I think.

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This week the hammer is down so I don’t have time to drink coffee and pick my own brain. I’ve had my best week on the spear with Snapper as seen in Saturdays vlog. I managed a couple more on Wednesday.

Sunday was a day to just cruise about. Managed to shoot some tasty drone footage to finish the weekend off

As for this weekend and why the hammer has been placed on the floor, we are off to Coro to hopefully score some long awaited wave skim! I’m not sure when I’m coming back.

See you at the beach!

-Sam

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Adventure NZ Podcast #2 The Past & Future Of Skimboarding In New Zealand

Waves blog

Straight from the depths of skimboarding in New Zealand, I feel there isn’t two people more qualified to discuss this topic.

The past is very simple to speak on seeing we were the two who first started making boards. As much as I would love to fill you in with all the talk, that would defeat the purpose of the Podcast.

Check the video below

Soundcloud link and download

My love affair with skimboarding is set to continue. As for next months podcast I feel a surfing related one is in order.

See you at the beach!

-Sam

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What Do You Do?

Is this the most commonly asked question when meeting someone new? I think it probably is, well besides asking someones name.

I’ve been thinking about this plain little question a bit and I will quote my friend Jimi Hunt from Live More Awesome here “I think it’s a lazy question. Most people don’t actually like what they do a hell of a lot so why make them talk about it?”

I eat, sleep, shit like everyone else. I work, which I feel that’s what you were asking?

It seems what we do for work is the most interesting thing for people, which isn’t interesting. It’s boring. Is your work boring? Mine is, it just has a greater highlight reel than most.

Creating a business and brand around the idea of doing whatever I want is a lot harder than you’d think. You probably think it’s hard and like I said, it’s harder than that. I have bills to pay and a mouth to feed so I need to make a certain number of change each week just to survive. Lucky for me I’m not too lazy to make my lunch, I don’t have a drug or alcohol addiction and overall know how to live fairly cheaply.

This week has been spent in front of the computer, writing and editing from the last little trip away amongst other things. I went away again for work, or should I say “work”. The beauty of this creative business is that I can go away and enjoy myself for work. Consider it branding and advertising as I don’t make substantial money off doing it but it really adds to what I do! So here it is below, a little bit about what I did last week.

Thursday myself and good friend Mike took off to the Far North swell chasing. We woke early Friday and hit the beach for a day of smiles

With an easing swell and fine weather we were up early Saturday, beach bound. This place we skimmed in the arvo is actually scene to our best couple of skims ever, sadly it isn’t in form currently

And they don’t call it Sunday Funday for nothing do they? Why not walk for fricken miles in bare feet? I don’t regret it but I will wear shoes next time

So there it is, a little slice of what I do. Stay tuned for more highlight reels.

Maria Mike blog

See you at the beach!

-Sam

PS What do you do?

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The Ever Changing Face Of Content Creation

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I made my first video with the help of a couple others in 2009. It was a compilation of skimboarding clips uploaded on March 6th 2009 (find it here). Quality was terrible but the actual content was pretty cool!

Over the next few years I dabbled with plenty of different videos all skimboarding related. Short story is the sport really fell off here so I stopped making content simply because I didn’t know how to make videos without other people.

Fast forward to the start of 2014 and I had started researching content creation and the future of it. I had a couple of people put their names forward to help out as they wanted to build their own platform and failed. Consistent content was the name of the game so I loosely planned to put something out once a week which was a tall order while still learning about how to make videos without other people.

March 10th 2014 and I uploaded a very basic Instagram clip to a new YouTube channel followed by a couple more. I moved into the idea of informative monthly wrap ups, skimboarding info, motivation and fitness related videos. I even did a couple of video forecasts for skimboarding which was well received. This consistent thing was fun.

Back in 09 skimboarding compilation videos were the name of the game and was what worked. Fast forward to 2016 and the similar video style seems to be my consistently least viewed which is interesting seeing the production is about 4700x better. The tricks haven’t really advanced and there’s still so very few people worth getting on film but boy are they fun to make! In terms of enjoyment, they’re number one. I’m talking about this because I dropped another little clip to the Minute Massacre series shot a couple of weeks ago with just one other in about 90 minutes.

Find it below and let me know what you think!?

Good fun yes! Well produced yes! Tricks are cool but needing advancement by youthful keen riders, which is the hold up.

Creating content is fun and it’s a little weird to think that people actually tune in to see what’s happening. “Vlogs” is also a huge part of my creative life and well, life in general. It gets me out and has allowed me to learn on the go, all the weird things involved without having to sit in a horrible classroom environment. You can find my vlog channel OXS TV here.

So where to from here? Keeping on the ball and having a very open mind is what I pride myself in so that I can be sure of. As well as drones, people really like drone footage! Where content is going there is no certainty, all I know is that I’m going to keep creating and biting at the heels of everyone doing it!

See you at the beach!

-Sam

 

 

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The Mice Played

Mid week last week rolled around and it was time to hit the road again. The team of Mice, consisting of my Dad, Uncle, a friend from America and myself were heading north for a few days of fun, in and on the water. The cat (my Mum) was heading south for a weekend doing whatever cats do.

Dan dunes blog

A long drive on Thursday night brought me to Houhora in good spirits and good weather.

Friday morning we got out on the water for a very green and quiet spear. The afternoon could be the most scenic and enjoyable few hours I’ve had lately. Check it

North Cape was Saturdays destination. North Cape is more north than Cape Reinga in case you didn’t know. We dove there at New Years with some bronzies. We ate shark on Saturday. Find it here

Sunday was moving day and a rather spontaneous filming of my first video podcast which I believe will be live this Sunday

I’ve shot a heeeeap of images up north in the last couple of weeks so I will think I will throw together a separate blog post featuring them as well as a couple of videos.

Cape blue blog

Stay tuned for the podcast. I will see you at the beach!

-Sam

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Seeking Professional Help

Boat 1 blog

First and foremost this isn’t a cry for help. This is however, a fairly desperate attempt at joining up with creative professionals. This is difficult to write because the butthurt is always real when you have to pull from real life experiences. It is and has been time to start making moves for a long time now.

After a chat to someone the other day who can see my distress in going away for another long weekend, alone. Keeping in mind I am going to a friends 30th for the first couple of nights so I guess it’s not alone but it feels it. It is the same situation as the Great Barrier trip, where I have gone the last couple of years with people I hardly know (one of whom isn’t even from this country) but now regard as good friends. My more “regular” friends nowhere to be seen.

Anyway over the course of this chat we established that I need to being dealing with professionals. By professionals I mean those who get paid to do a certain thing, are committed to said thing and most of all, passionate about said thing! That criteria is a must as simply doing “things” for the claimed love of it doesn’t seem to work.

A THIS trip mentality is what I need, not a NEXT trip mentality.

I understand that we all have commitments likes jobs, debt and relationships. All of which are overly consuming. We’ve also sold ourselves on this BS that we’re all so gosh darn busy. So busy it seems that we can’t make time for the things we love, or claim to love. The number of people who say the want to but can’t is quite frankly, disturbing.

Everyone seems so bloody exhausted that the thought of getting up early and doing “things” seems to be something you have to ration out to maybe once a year. Twice if you feel daring.

So the people I’m after are those people who have a track record or doing “things”. A paper trail of receipts and a few SD cards full of files for proof. Water babies that think the cool winter waters are interesting and refreshing. Creators who create. Photographers that like to push that shutter button hundreds of times over a few days. Surfers who love to surf. Skimmers who love to skim. Sprearos who love to spear. Adventurers who love to adventure. If you have a following I would like to follow you. Hopefully not in a weird, behind the bushes kind of way.

In my opinion it’s not that hard but it is also something I’m passionate about. I love it more than most people love anything at all. It’s my chosen line of work, even though the pay sucks. It’s how I like to spend my time rather than putting a long weekend on hold because I might have to meet someone for lunch.

The next little while we see myself setting up a video podcast that will hopefully discuss a variety of topics. I just need to find professional, opinionated people who I can get on it. This requires a no, to yes men. Opinions and ideas and what I’m after. Not head nods and cancellations. I’m now really trying to expand my reach into bigger platforms, people and ideas, which is interesting to say the least.

This is all probably a bit bitter and well it probably is. I’m a bit bitter that I’m going away again with a list of awesome things to do and see, alone.

I would love to take ideas for videos and photos and put them into action. Not having to constantly think of ways to film myself would be awesome. To my creative professionals, check out my daily videos below and throw some ideas at me as to how we could make them better. I have a million ideas and I hope you do too!


To the rest of you, I’ll sure I will see you at the beach, next time.

-Sam

 

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165gb Of Great Barrier Island Content.

That’s not a typo. After returning this week from “The Barrier” and clearing all my cameras, 165gb was the number on the folder.

Memory Rock GLow blog

That consists of shooting with a DJI Phantom 3 drone, Sony Handycam, Sony A6000, three different GoPros (one of which is now dead), all in the highest res possible.

Now comes the what to do with it all?

Cliff Top blog

The daily vlogs are underway  on OXS TV, with Day 5 dropping soon after this post goes up. These videos are produced to really try capture the whole experience with where we are, what we’re doing, eating and laughing about. These aren’t directly attached here for now but a full update will be coming in a couple of days. Get along to OXS TV HERE.

The pictures. Oh boyyy the pictures. I have several HDR drone panos to edit from the top of mountains, beaches and sunsets that I haven’t got to yet!

Hobson_ blog

Aaaand of course my main channel productions which basically takes the best of the best and jams it all together. I’m also going to drop a little highlight video in the next couple of days from the trip.

Hours upon hours of editing is where I’m at.

All the fantastic updates are coming soon so stay tuned.

Thank you to the people who made the trip what it was. Simply put, I feel Great Barrier Island is an adventure lovers paradise that we all should experience!

Tugg Adam blog

See you at the beach!

-Sam

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Those Videos I Mentioned Last week

In regards to last weeks blog post, I referred to a couple of videos that I couldn’t post due to them not being live blah blah etc etc. I was away, doing this sort of thing

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Anyway this is just an update with those videos. This first one is possibly my favourite production to date! Shot over Easter weekend, boy oh boy

The Saturday was a beautiful sunrise and dive session. Another Kingfish!

Sunday. Boy the weather sucked but we smoked some fish and had one of the most fun winch sessions to date

That’s the update. I’m working really hard on all the barrier footage with vlogs already up on OXS TV so check it out!

See you at the beach.

-Sam

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Interrupted Workflow

I’m late!

With this blog post.

Why? Well a few reasons but one was a small little breakdown with some of my printing gear on both Thursday and Friday. Friday it ground to a halt completely so here I am writing about something that isn’t really relevant. Late.

The week was work filled but the weekend was spent at a Skim Jam organised by one of my team riders, Josh Worsley at Cheltenham. The days action is below.

Chelt 2 blog Chelt 3 blog Chelt 4 blog Groms 1 blog

Sunday was a real beauty spent in the water catching a feed then up the coast at Waipu Glow Worms and taking snaps around Mangawhai

Caves 1 blog Caves 2 blogMangawhai Heads 1 blog Mangawhai Heads 2 blog

We’ll finish this weeks post off with my highlight. I dropped a video recap of the the shark experience at Leigh from couple of weeks ago! Peep the video for a documentary style slice of fun

So that’s it, I’m back on track. I’ve got something very exciting to show you soon!

See you at the beach.

-Sam

 

 

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February – Sharks, Kingfish, Skimboarding & Drones

Oh February, what a funny month. It was hot, wet, bloody humid at times and a whole heaps of fun!

A lot of skimming, a lot of Kingfish and I even got dragged around by a shark which was interesting.

I could ramble on here but the monthly video wrap up seems far easier. Find it below

We’re now well into March and she’s a ripper!

Favourite vlog from February

Favourite photo

Ti Point 1 blog

 

As always, I will see you at the beach!

-Sam