Waves
SURF
I've lived my life by the storm. From when I was just 12 I'd leave home, often in the predawn, to walk down the road for a surf. I'd make a decision along the way and pick one of my usual routes depending on the weather and my mood. Was Mother Nature going to produce a beach, reef or point break to surf that day?
We didn't have internet back then. No surf reports or mobile phones. We'd watch the weather on the nightly news, read the weather maps in the newspaper, listen to the wind in the trees, feel the air and listen to our gut feeling to make a call on where the best surf might be that morning. I'd walk, walk faster, jog or run with my board for 15, 30, 60 minutes depending on how good the surf might be and how far I wanted to go.
I was always on a mission, whether it was before or after school, the weekend or the luxurious long break of school holidays. That fire still burns within me four decades on. Now that I have more tools at my disposal the search and the quest has simply expanded. But the mission is the same. Looking for a wave. A perfect moment in the ocean when weather, water and geography all combine to make magic.
The first surf images I took were shots of my mates on a little plastic waterproof film camera. Now I fly to all corners of the globe, scour maps for unridden waves and see perfect barrels in real life that I used to only dream about and draw in the margins of my school books. These pieces are just a sample of the thousands and thousands of images I have captured and created over the decades. For many years they stayed in files waiting for space in magazines. Now you can enjoy them on your wall.