I did a lecture on GoPro cameras

Cornwall College has a facility in Newquay, and at that facility they run the Surf Science course. You may wonder, ‘Surf Science? That’s a bit of a wheeze isn’t it?’. Well, certainly the course looks like a heck of a lot of fun for the students, since they learn how to shape surfboards, organise events (the second year students I lectured are organising the English Surf Nationals), learn about the history of surfing, study oceanography, look at business and marketing strategies, practise coaching techniques, and lots more. But as you can see, these subjects are incredibly diverse and the only thing that links them together is the connection with the act of surfing.

I was asked to do a guest lecture on GoPro cameras by a friend of mine who is one of the course technicians.  He bought a couple of Gopros for the students to use, but it is required that they know what they are doing with them first before they are set loose. So I went down to the classroom at Tolcarne Beach and lectured for a bit, and then got the students to suit up and hit the water to generate some shots of their own so they could put into practise what they’d just learned.

There was no surf, it was overcast and quite windy. I put the responsibility into the hands of the students to think of some interesting shots we could get. After filming backflips, sprinting through shallows and body surfing, we went on to try filming underwater.

Here is the footage of that swim; part way through one of the students pops his shoulder out of the socket. In a normal classroom situation this would be quite alarming but he handled it very well, I guess he was a pretty tough character, and it’s not the first time it happened. I won’t dwell on the dislocati0n, so will finish off by saying that delivering the lecture was very rewarding and I hope to go back next year and run a lecture on cross over sports associated with surfing.