Exploring The Hitherto Unexplored and Unexplainable World Of The Surf Photographer.

After 10 years of watching surf photographers on the beaches of the North Shore, you often feel like David Attenborough lying amongst a tribe of siesta-ing mountain gorillas while filming a BBC wildlife documentary. The photographers are a curious sub species of the surfing genus, and there’s no better place to study their peculiar social habits than here in Hawaii in December.

The beaches of Oahu’s North Shore are where every surf photographer worth his salt migrates to each November and December. You can find them clustered in large, squawking flocks on the beaches at Rocky Point and Pipeline, or swimming like cantankerous sea lions out at Pipeline. Competition for the trophy shot is hot, and will often result in territorial tripod disputes on the sand, and clashes over a surfer who’s being shot “exclusively” amongst a pack of 300 others at Pipe.

Out in the water it gets even worse. Nothing ruins a great surf photo more than having the heads of 25 other competing surf photographers in the frame, so out at Pipeline it becomes a game of jockeying for pole position. Curl photographer Dave Sparkes, shit-stirrer par excellence, has found a way to annoy those behind him out there even more by painting his web address – sparkesphoto.com – in bold letters on the back of his Gath helmet. Not only does he screw up their shots, he gets a free plug by doing so. All part of the fun and games, as he’ll happily explain to you.

After a decade editing surf magazines and studying these unique specimens at close quarter, my theory is that they all eventually suffer some form of degenerative eccentricity over the years. It’s a result, I believe, of never being able to surf when the waves are good, and the cumulative effect of their brains being boiled in their skulls after standing in the sun for 25 straight years.

But they are, for the whole, salt of the earth, gold hearted human beings. If you want a straight answer about the state of surfing today, you don’t ask a pro surfer, you don’t ask a surf industry marketing executive, you go no further than your friendly neighbourhood surf photographer. He’ll tell ya how it is, and he’s almost always right.

The long hours of brain boiling toil, for most of these guys, amount to little financially (at least that’s what they’ll tell you), (at length). Despite most of these guys shooting photos hand to mouth, it’s patently clear that taking surfing for a living is, essentially, a lifestyle over dollar deal. Its art over retainer. And if you ever want to discard an hour of your life like a Mars bar wrapper blowing down the street, just get these guys started on the topic of why they shoot photos in the first place.

“This is interesting shit, this is where we need to get to!” cries Curl photographer and budding anchorman, Sean Davey, this afternoon, when we convened a definitive surf photographers forum with three guys who happened to be in the house having lunch at the time. “For me it’s the joy of sharing it with others. For me this is a moment that I saw. I was there on the beach, and it would never have happened if I wasn’t there to appreciate these moments and capture these moments of beauty that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.”

Jon Frank, sitting next to him, does not concur, as he would say. “I respect your view, but I come from a different angle. I shoot photos to satisfy myself. I don’t give a f*ck about anyone else.”

“But don’t you get satisfaction showing them to someone else?” barks Davey. “I just know that I’ve somehow created something beautiful from something that was already there. It’s not an entirely selfish pursuit, is it?”
“I think it is for me,” barbs back Frank, matter-of-factly. “I don’t do it for other people. It makes me feel good.”
Davey: “I don’t do it for other people as such, but, I mean, it’s nice to capture something like that and show it to people.”
Frank: “If people see the photo and get something out of it its good. I’m happy for them but I don’t think that’s where it comes from.
Davey: “Selfish bastard isn’t he?”
Frank: “I think I am.”
Davey: “Geez, we’re getting deep, and we’re only one-and-a-half beers in.”
Non-photographers in the room: “Zzzzzzzzz….”

But get these guys started and it’s as clear as the lens on their camera that shooting photos is a profession that sinks its roots into the soil of a photographer’s entire existence.
“It was October, 1977, the 14th,” recalls Davey of the first surf photo he ever took. “I’d just got home from high school and the first thing I did was grab my board and go surfing. I was living at Bronte beach in Sydney. I ran down there and the surf was seriously four inches high. Then I got the light bulb above my head. I ran back home and got the old camera that had been sitting in the back of the cupboard for four years. I thought, I’m gonna take a photo of these waves and show my mates. I ran back home and go this little crappy Kodak instamatic. I got really low down in the shoreline and I got this photo of a wave and it made it look four feet, not four inches. My mates thought, why isn’t anyone out? I thought, geez, that surf photography capers not that bad. I’d photographed a wave that was tiny and had made it a wave my mates wanted to surf. That was 31 years ago.”

Frank: “Shorty (the Danny de Vito of surf photography, Andrew “Shorty” Buckley) how many good photos do you think you’ve taken?
Shorty: “A handful.”
Frank: “I feel the same way.”
Davey: “You guys are full of shit.”
Frank: “What you do as a living and put out there is not necessarily the things you think are your best stuff.”
Shorty: “You’ve got your job, and we do what we love, but the photos we really love to take is the stuff that never gets published anyway.”
Non-photographers in the room: “Zzzzzzzzz….”    

For years I’ve been toying with the idea of pitching a reality TV show called Photographer’s Island. The concept is simple. An uninhabited Pacific island with half a dozen world-class waves breaking around it. I – the producer – parachute a dozen of the most unhinged, subversive, and downright comical surf photographers the world has ever seen onto the island, having picked them with personal grudges and propensity to melt down in tropical climates both in mind.

It’s every man for himself, and best shot wins a million dollars. Then as the cameras start rolling, the helicopter starts whoomping in the distance, lands on the beach, and out of the chopper disembarks Mick Fanning and Kelly Slater… the proverbial blood in the shark tank. Roll cameras... //SEAN DOHERTY

“Warning. This is an emergency broadcast. Switch your television immediately to channel 48 for a full update.”

It’s been raining coconuts all night and all morning, the heaviest rain the islands have experienced all year. The roof sounds like it’s being hit by fishing sinkers throughout the night. Unable to sleep I wake up to piss at 5.30am, and hear the voices of fellow On The Rockers B1 and B2, smoking darts outside the toilet window, talking about life and love. I hear the word “emotional” dropped, and am immediately glad I’d pulled the ripcord at midnight.

The North Shore stretch was rocking last night. With a big exodus out of the Pipe Masters yesterday, there was no shortage of crew looking to toast the season. At the Off The Wall house Mick Fanning was hosting a shindig in honour of Curl Pit Boss, Matt Griggs, who is moving on next year. It was also the end of the season for Mick, who came up one wave short at Pipe yesterday, so Mick walked out the door at about 5pm and brought Eugene off the bench in his place. Also there last night was Danny Wills. “Chucky” (Willsy’s alter ego equivalent of Eugene) was bringing down the curtain on a great career, and had wife Kirsty and tin lids, Jayden and Simone in tow.  Onya Willsy, you little legend.

“I’m on ‘olidays!” was Mick’s catch cry last night. Karissa is here, and his Mum Liz is over here along with his sister Rachel and her kids, so Mick is gonna hang out for a week on The Rock. Mick had the good sense to get the women and children out of the house last night though, because it got a little weird.

Walking through the Off The Wall house at 9.30am to check the surf and it’s a warzone. On the lounges are both the Harrington twins, Shaun and Dean, as well as Shagga. One rental property on the North Shore apparently has a specific clause written into it stating that the Harringtons are forbidden for sleeping under the roof. It’s true, apparently, much to the amusement of the twins, who held court last night recounting their story (for the three millionth time no doubt) about surviving two days in the open ocean when Dean Morrison’s boat sank off the Great Barrier Reef. 

The surf is unrecognisable from yesterday. What had been, the previous afternoon, perfect little four foot blue barrels, were reduced to sludgey, brown, ecoli one-footers as a result of the rain. It’s safe to say no one is surfing today. Mick calls our place at 11am, the first signs of life from the house, and frog croaks, “Have you got the number of the cleaner who did your place?”

We do the ritual Ted’s Bakery hangover breakfast – bacon and egg breakfast sandwich and a foot-tall coffee. While at the other end of the stretch at Shark’s Cove Starbucks is the favourite of the surf industry blow-ins, Ted’s remains staunchly local. Standing in line with the musty décor and hand written signs and old fashioned cholesterol-loaded treats and DIY coffee, I begin to imagine – and secretly dream of – a worldwide chain of Ted’s Bakeries. Now that’s keeping the country country, and that’s a world I want to live in!

In front of me in the line at Ted’s are two local builders talking about how excited their respective kids were when they found out they’d got the morning off because of the rain. It’s still pissing down out there, and roads across Oahu are being cut off. The Kam Highway between Pipe and Rockpiles is covered by six inches of water in several spots, creating the only feasible chance of anyone getting barrelled today as traffic flows past.

Eating my bacon and egg “breakfast sandwich” – the surprisingly amazing equivalent of an Australian bacon and egg roll – and I’m making friends. A local Hawaiian couple offer me a dry seat.

“Thanks, mate,” I offer back.
“Wow, you guys are Australian, eh?”
“Yeah… mate.”
“So, you guys call us Sepoys, eh?”
“Nah, we save that for the mainlanders. Hawaiian’s Hawaiian, mate.”

Tomorrow is looking like being the best of the next week, although it probably doesn’t have much competition. The lead sinkers are still falling as I scratch this out, but, with the swell supposed to bump right up tomorrow, it looks a pretty sure bet we’re gonna have the Pipe Masters finishing up.

See yam at Ted’s in the morning for the heart-starter. //SEAN DOHERTY