“Life on the road was something I was raised to embrace
Me ma always encouraged us to open our eyes and hearts to the world
Make up our own minds for experience and be inspired.
I see life in angles, in lines of perspective – the slow turn of a head, the blink of an eye, subtle glimpses of magic – other folk might pass by.
Cameras help me translate, interpret and understand what I see. It’s a
simple act that keeps me grinnin’. I never set out to become anything
in particular, only to live creatively and push the scope of my
experience for adventure and for passion. They still all mean
something to me, same as most anyone with dreams. My heart
bleeds celtic blood and I magnetize the familiar frontiers. The raw
brutal cold coastlands for the right waveriders to challenge – this is
where my heart beats hardest.
I try to pay tribute to that magic through photographs. Weathering
the endless staunch for rare glimpses of magic each winter is both a
blessing and a curse I relish.
I wanna see waveriding documented the way I see it in my head, and
the way I feel it in the sea. This is a strange set of skills to begin to
acquire. This is only achievable through time spent riding waves. All
sorts of waves on all sorts of crafts. There is more time spent learning
out on the water, floating in the sea amongst lumps and swells, you
always learn something. It’s been a lifelong wise old classroom
teacher of sorts and hopefully, it always will be. Buried beneath
headlands, shaping the coast, mind-blowing images of empty waves
burn away at me.
Solid ocean swells powering through deep cold water, heavy waves
weighs in wait, coaxed from comfortable routine, ignite the
imagination, conveys some of the viny spark, whisper possibilities,
conjure the situations I thrive amongst and love to document.
We all take knocks in the process – broken backs, drownings, neardrownings,
hypothermia, dislocations, fractures, frostbite, head
wounds, stitches, concussions, broke my arm – and that’s just the last
couple of years, still look forward to getting amongst it each winter
though.
Cold creeping into your core, driving you mad, day after day,
mumbling to yourself while you hold position and wait for the next
set to come. The dark side of the lens – An artform that to itself and
us, silent workhorses of the surfing wake. There’s no sugary cliché.
Most folk don’t even know who we are, and what we do or how we
do it, let alone what they pay us for it.
I never want to take this for
granted so I try to keep motivation simple, real, and positive.
If I only scrape a living, at least it’s a living where I’m scraping.
If there’s no future in it, this is a present worth remembering.
For fires of happiness and waves of gratitude. For everything that
brought us to that point on earth at that moment in time, to do
something worth remembering with a photograph, or a scar -I feel
genuinely lucky and hand on heart say I love doing what I do. And I
may never be a rich man, or live long enough, then sadly I have a tale
or two for the nephews. And I dig the thought of that.”
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