Well, after 60 hours of filming, shooting editing and streaming the 2010 St. Francis Resort SA Longboard Champs by Oxbow (I had to learn to say this over a microphone) I am finally back at home with my family, my own bed and on my laptop and uncapped internet.

Vodacom pulled a couple of blind ones on us with the 3G that was down for a while as did the onshores and electrical connections which interrupted some of the live stream etc. but all in all I am very happy with the results and outcome of the whole endevour. The ¨we¨ I am talking about it my friend, Rasool who gave me a hand for the week, and his friend, Shafiek who´s in charge of the Palama Metsi outfits in Capetown and Elands Bay. We also lost a power supply and Tuesday was a holiday, so I had to wait untill a computer shop was open to replace it. The setup was a bit rag tag, but we ended up having a pretty classy outfit and makining a good impression and lots of new friends. (Shafiek put the now famous blue gazeebo in the equasion which ensured us that the sun would not kill us)

I terms of the photos, we were very happy with the pictures and so was all the contestants who bought photos. I am also rigged to print up to A4 photos on the spot on glossy photo paper and many people bought. Shafiek is a photographer and Rasool did film school and some acting and we all surf so the resulting images were stunning.

Nobody else on the event covered it as extensively as we did it, and we literally filmed it from beginning to end. We did miss a couple of heats, but at least have 95% of all the heats.As is, non edited DVD´s of the entire event will be on sale soon.

The streaming was done in collaboration with saltsurfmag.com who is owned by Brad Weare who´s also part of the Cloud 9 brand. Brad was a little busy on the event since he surfed in the Masters and Open division and ended up in both finals so we did not see much of each other, but we made sure that the word is out and the event gave great exposure to SALTsurfmag..

Dave Lipschitz and the EP Longboard crew really gave us a warm reception and even organised for us to stay in some rooms that were open at the resort which helped us to cut overheads even more. Big thanks for the EP Longboard guys and the whole SA Longboard family for accepting us into the comp and allowing us to do what we did.

I learned a lot out of the event, and will apply it in other future events. We want to approach the broadcast in a more professional manner and also throw video ads in there etc.  If you have any surf comps or events that need coverage either in photography, video or streaming, then please contact me.

All I can say is watch this space, jbaysurfcam.com is going places.

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