Something For Windy

Jimmy Zhang – wind wizard

PISSING INTO THE WIND.

Making a windsurfing film is like pissing into the wind. When shooting from land, the guys are often so far away that you need a zoom lens to see any action. Zoom lenses, when in contact with salty air, tend to dysfunction. And the wind plays havoc with stabilization. Drones don’t like wind that much, and the subject is often moving so fast that the drone can’t keep up with the windsurfer in the first place. Try chasing a windsurfer across a 2 kilometer-squared area. It sucks. Operating a Go Pro whilst windsurfing is not that simple – the lens fogs up, the angle could be set up horribly wrong, and most of your footage often ends up looks crappy anyway – so why bother? Then add to that the harsh environment – the wind, salt and ( sometimes) rough seas. The risk of damaging or losing your gear (yes drones get lost, and Go Pros become dismounted) can be so great that it puts most people (including myself) off doing it. And forget swimming around for water shots – the guys are generally windsurfing on days when the waves are too big and the currents are just too strong to stay in one place, so you end up getting washed downwind, out of the action zone, within a few minutes. So basically the point I’m getting at is that it was bloody hard making this 2 minute long clip! Take a look at ‘Something for Windy’ below.

Camera: Mark Jackson
Drone: Yong-yi Chen
Edit: Mark Jackson
Music: The Whole Other "A Guy Walks Into a Bar" 

Windsurfing is just so awesome that I would love to show how beautiful it is, and from a closer perspective. When the wind is up and the surf is blown out, there is nothing else I’d rather be doing. In fact, doing something else when I can hear the wind rustling in trees outside gives me an incredibly guilty feeling, almost like a naughty boy who has skipped school.

blueness

JOIN US ON A WINDSURFING ADVENTURE.

The windy season just started mid-September (officially with the Moon Festival) which means the Taitung Windsurf Wave Classic is around the corner. Here at WGLG we are looking forward meeting up with our old friends and making new ones.

Follow the Wave Classic on Facebook here:
www.facebook.com/taitungwaveclassic/

A windy day at the Jinzun office