About “elsurfhub”…
Marvin Markham
Many of my interests lay in the hands of the surf world. I have been an ocean endeavour for 20 years. Surfing is what makes me happy, it is what makes me wake up in the morning, it is what keeps me up at night. I am also very interested in web design, video editing, and computer science. I have 3 websites; 2 personal blogs and 1 site that is intended for my personal brand(for which I am dedicating this written document to). I am currently studying Computer Science and Applied Digital Technology. One of my objectives with this degree is to better the documentation of the surf world.
A problem I have noticed is the fast photography/media of surfing. By fast photography/media, I intend to compare it to the fast fashion of the clothing industry. With fast fashion, large companies print out an excessive amount of clothing to match what is “in”. The clothing is not durable and gets replaced every season. Fast photography is metaphorically the same occurrence that is happening in the surf world. The social reds have a strong grip on surfing’s media. Thousands of images are posted every day, to be forgotten the next hour. Many athletes work really hard for an instagram post that will have a high probability to have little to no value in the real world. As soon as we view a post, seldomly do we see the post again.
So why do I consider fast media an issue? It is more of a conservation of surfing documentation issue. When images come and go on social media, it creates a bubble of hype that pops every day, every hour. Images come in, only to be forgotten the next hour. Surfing used to be covered by magazine companies, which was great, however, many magazine companies went bankrupt due to the social reds. So what now? What is a possible solution to steer the media to consume more timeless, saturated, and well developed content? How can better documentation lead to more sophisticated people in the world of surfing? How can surfing become breathtaking again through better media coverage? A surfing film that I would like to bring to the light is one by a South African Surfer named Mikey February. The film, called Sonic Souvenirs, is a half hour long documentary about culture, music, and surfing in South Africa. It is something that historians can look back on and give it credibility. Watching the film feels extremely refreshing, and you do not need to be a surfer to be absorbed by the documentary. Much like opening a to a page in a National Geographic magazine to extravagant colors, sophisticated text, and culture professionals, my goal is to release captivating stories that will be timeless.
We are all affected by the social reds. There is no way around it. For better or worse, social reds are here to stay, but the content will always be fast photography. Social reds for surfers was almost devastating. Many surfers who have been around for a while have blamed social media and the pandemic for “ruining” surfing. Reds have revealed secret spots, and exploited the surfing communities that used to be extremely lowkey. Surfing was an underground culture for the longest of time, even here in Puerto Rico, surfing was never a mainstream activity. Not many people surfed. In 2014 you could arrive at any beach that was not well known and surf for hours on end with nobody in sight. The pandemic allowed people to work from home and move out to the countryside, where many of us surfers live, crowding the beaches, and bringing in a different vibe to the water. Today’s new surfers behavior would be considered extremely unethical to the standards that it used to be upheld. There is definitely a clash with pandemic surfers and those who surfed for many years.
The trend of fast photography must be redesigned to support our communities and richen the culture of surfing. The content that surfers consume must be the perfect balance of educational, sophisticated, and entertaining.
My solution is to create a digital platform in the form of a website where surfers can go to feel encaptivated by rich content. The website will offer three main hubs of content: a video and photography hub, a forecasts and buoy hub, and a documentary hub. I have temporarily named it “elsurfhub”.
el surf hub 