I was reading a blog post last night, about why your blog doesn’t get read, most of which i agreed with. Therefore with a spurt of energy, im going to throw myself at writing more frequently and openly. Apparently its the best way.

Whats been taking-up all my time ? well, Agent Lynch has a shiny new website, powered by WordPress, Flickr, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. We had fun making that happen. It was the first Facebook Connect integration I’ve done and was nice to see it implemented and working. Ms Lynch is a good friend of a couple of friends – if that’s even a sentence – one of whom is Roxy Velvet. It was great to get her a sit up and running that she not only liked visually, but could attack from a content point of view and really enjoy working with.

AgentLynch.com

The Facebook Connect integration was done with relative ease, using a WordPress plugin that needed only a small amount of kicking and hacking to get working as I needed. I did in-fact use two plugins, one for the on-page login, and one for the admin/user prompt login. All the other Twitter/Flickr/Youtube bits and pieces are the standard ones ive used elsewhere.

If 6 Was 9 – its back ! – Randall has got new designs and a new movie. After filming on his trip to the Mentawai’s, he posted the video on the We are If 6 Was 9 blog. The flash site was produced by him, i just helped get the pre-loader, hosting and analytics sorted.

Slatehall Riding Centre

I did a superb little shoot last week to get some shots for a local tourism brochure and book. Slatehall Riding Centre met me on the beach along with Claire from Imapct PR and we had some fun in the shallows. Nice looking shots we all thought. The full Flickr set is here.

Bamburgh Castle

Holy Island Castle

Beach gallop

Farne Island Divers

Finally, over the bank holiday I spent the weekend with the Farne Island Divers crew diving with the seals around the Longstone. A great few days that I recorded with my little Canon compact, and the result was this small but fun video chopped together fro the video clips..

Farne Islands Divers – Diving with Seals – August 2009 from swinhoe on Vimeo.

More once Ive got something to say…

The highlights…

We spent a week with the Sail Rock divers on Koh Phangan, diving in the Gulf of Thailand, great crew and great setup. The video below was shot and edited by Alex there.

Diving on Koh Phangan with Sail Rock Divers from swinhoe on Vimeo.

We stopped in at the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise with Randall and the folks from Noosa to see the first weekend of the Quiksilver Pro at D’bah.

The QuikPro setup at D'bah

The waves were reasonable, but the highlight was watching the semi’s and final with Parko and Mick going head-to-head, pulling ten point rides out in the heaving Cyclone surf.

Whilst in Noosa for the Festival of Surfing, we dropped in at the Classic Malibu factory to see Randall and Jake in office clothes.

Classic Malibu factory

Cyclone Hamish, hit Noosa during the visit and we snagged some footage of the biggest day, video below.

Noosa Points – Cyclone Hamish – 10.03.09 from swinhoe on Vimeo.

We toured in New Zealand for a while, including a visit to Raglan to catch a decent overhead swell.

Raglan point wave.

Raglan point - long view

The Noosa Festival threw-up a few gems too, seeing Bob McTavish and Rusty Miller surf first point, Dave Rastovich riding an alaia, and the premiere of the new Michael Peterson film “Searching for Michael Peterson” (website)

Searching for Michael Peterson

As well as the MP film, Picaresque was also premiered, to a great reception. One of the best surf films Ive seen in a while.

Check the tralier here.