Smorgasboarder_23_winter_2014

PHOTO: PERSPECTIVES
Jayden and Alex. We begun our walk down to
the break. On our way down Jayden and Alex
decided they would walk a little further. As we
walked past the first spot, I was watching the
surfers out there pulling off some pretty gnarly
airs in pretty average surf. We stopped to watch
for a moment. It was pretty cool to watch. “Due
to social media we could straight away pick out
Kael Welsh because of his wetsuit and size, and
Jordan was pretty noticeable because of his hair
and wetsuit (laughs). I told Jayden and Alex that I
was just going to take a few shots of Jordan and
Kael and then catch back up. I ended up staying
there the whole time until Jay and Alex walked
back past me. I had my pillow with me because I
was planning on having a nap on the beach, but
it ended up serving as pretty good cushion to sit
on! There are a few rocks up one end of the bay
and I straight away thought they would be good
to get a bit a of depth in the photo. I bee-lined it
for them and began trying to fi nd an angle I liked.
I took a few test shots and decided on one angle,
put my pillow down and got comfy...
“I got a couple of good shots of Kael and a few
average ones of Jordan. Jordan was doing little
air reverses off waves that had barely any push
or wall to them. After a small amount of time
there, one with a bit more of a wall was coming
through and Jordan was right on it. I could tell
he would do something good on it. I couldn’t
help but think to myself, 'Don’t mess it up.' I take
photos quite often and two things I know I mess
up a lot is keeping my focal points perfect and a
straight horizon. I had already messed up a few
shots early on because of this and was stressing
I was going to do it again.
"Jordan was already racing down the line, I saw
the closeout section coming towards him and
fi red away. I started the sequence a little bit late
and thought to myself ‘you stuffed it.’ He stuck it
and as soon as he landed and fi nished the wave,
I checked back my shot and on the little LCD of
my camera I was super stoked to see it turned
out pretty good.
"As soon as I got back to my computer I skipped
passed all my other photos to get to that
sequence and I was even more stoked to see it
on the big screen. I pretty much messaged Jordan
on Facebook straight away and asked if he was
surfing there earlier that day. He confirmed it
was him and I sent him the sequence and a
couple of others from the day, but that one was
clearly a stand out - I even set it as my desktop
background. We kept talking after that and
just like any two surfers, got along pretty well.
We still talk a little bit now and I think I'll start
hassling him out to make a clip or something!”
AUTUMN/WINTER 2014 | SMORGASBOARDER 79