The Truth about YouTube Raw Sessions
I used to watch them like I was smoking in the boys room. Looking over my shoulder, guilty about what it was telling my YouTube algorithm about me. That I was a crass, tasteless surf junky who didn’t give a damn about production value or the art of surf photography. Film it on an iPhone! I don’t care! A surf philistine of the worst order.
The raw session YouTube goes against everything my career is founded upon really. They are sensationalist, (usually) poorly shot and edited and feature places we’d prefer to keep at least a little bit quiet about. They are the potato chips and coke while sitting on the couch of surf culture.
Until Jimmy Wilson came into the game.
I’ve known Jimmy for a few decades now. We worked together at Surfing Magazine and we’ve traveled together to Indo and done various magazine projects. I was surprised to see him posting things like this. His surf photography is elite and I know he’s well-versed in the respectful way of operating with a camera at sensitive locations — he’s also known for speaking his mind on various surf topics and it’s one of the reason to love him even more. He’s as passionate about surfing and photography (and Florida and the Jags) as anyone I’ve ever met.
I reached out and asked about him posting these Raw Sessions — which immediately drew flack from a variety of “Surf Vloggers” for exposing a spot and waves they wanted to save and all of it seemed a little misplaced on Jimmy. He’s not the guy you’re after dudes.
The subtle context his commentary in these vids adds and the relationships he has with both pro surfers and the location’s kingpins make him a hard person to target for blowing out a spot. I’ll let that play out on social media but Jimmy told me what he hoped to accomplish with these Raw vids:
Jimmy Wilson:
“One thing that has been lost lately to me is perspective. If everyone posts one single best clip of themselves, how are people supposed to determine who is actually the best surfer? If you see the entire session, you know exactly who stood out. In this case, it was Skip [McCullough] by a mile, and I think he should get recognition for that. He’s been ruling for years but still doesn’t get the love. If I can help uplift people like that, I’m all for it.”
And that’s where I agree there is value in these. It’s rad to see the context of a whole session or day. I used to scour surf films for details I could stitch together to get an idea about what a session might have been like, and these raw vids do that. They may not have a rad song and make you wanna surf as bad, but they’re just as fascinating if only in a totally different way. Jimmy’s are the first I don’t feel weird about watching though, so thanks for posting ‘em Jimmy, cool to see what woulda been giving me The Surf Sweats if I stayed down south. Looks like you figured out the algorithm too. So viral!—Travis Ferré
P.S.: Chapter 11 got into the mix with this Daily Export as well (although they upped the production value with an ambient track to accompany). P.S.S Is that Tim Curran!?
