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Things You Should Know

I was down at California Street the other night to capture a few images of Malibu Surfer Brooke Carlson, the newest member of “Team Betty” for my wife’s company Bettybelts, when I saw someone headed into the water with what looked like a dive housing and a surfboard. It cracked me up. We call that sort of work where you ride and shoot or film another surfer: “board to board” work. It is tricky at best and amazingly difficult at worst. This image is the guy shooting. Again, hard to do. The lead image in this article is a shot

Bali: dispatch 3

It is a curious experience, when you walk down a beach, and have a look around at your surroundings recognizing that it is coming up on the time to leave. The thought dawns: will I be in this place again? It is not an entirely comfortable feeling, this one. Especially when one connects to the place and it’s people. I doubt there is a place on this blue marble where I have explored, that has not left it’s mark on me or left a portion of it’s psychic presence upon my self. This after all, is what life is about:

Bluebirds

Bluebirds are moments in time when the magical intersects with the mortal, and in process, one’s grasp of one’s ability, is re-defined. A Bluebird moment is about education, preparation, trial and conquest. I have had a few of these in my lifetime. Here is an account of one of them. I began my pilgrimages to the North Shore of Oahu late in my Surfing life. As a young Pro, it was basically part of the ritual of a Surfing Education, that you go there and test your ability. Though I always sort of sucked at tests in school, I seem

GMAC

Garrett MacNamara and I have been perpetually bumping into each other for over a decade now. He and I for many years, just seemed to always be in the same place and time to see the ocean and weather coincide to produce some remarkable moments. He surfed. I shot. AFterwards we both laughed. “Wow, you were there”. We finally exchanged phone numbers a few years back. I will not say that having the digits made things any easier to connect, but it sure makes for an extra few moments to share our very unique lives together. I doubt that

Jay Moriarty

Some people live in such a manner, that their exploits and attitudes define themselves, and become a part of History. It is fortunate to be around that type of person. You learn a lot. My fondest recollection of Jay Moriarty, is of him kick stalling in the barrel at Maverick’s, and smiling at me. A peculiar and unsettling memory, was getting a phone call informing me that he had died by drowning. I was driving South through Half Moon Bay, and looked up to see the Radar Tower at Pillar Point. The feeling of confusion I had felt when the

Model Models

Recently, NYC based production company Silent Crow was in Ventura. Two writers with the company happened to have connected with Donna Von Hoesslin of Betty B and learning a little bit about her female inspired Eco Fashion line. They came up with an idea. Producer Matt Bennett showed up to do a little bit of discovery work, and honed a reality show concept that deviated from the norm, in that it endeavors to look at the personalities and lives of the women in both my and Donna’s lives. Silent Crow named the show Bonafide. Donna and I have long exchanged

What is Surfing: Fifty Views

Each day lately, begins with me wading though the e mail file. Today I opened a newsletter from an organization which I support, by lending them usage of some of my images. The subject header was “International Surfing Day”. A “Cool, we have our own day” impulse when I pressed the “read” icon, rapidly transitioned to less than kind post read thoughts. The newsletter yielded the cyber floor to a new surf magazine editor from Orange County who I had never heard of, and who communicated his chronologically and geologically biased adolescent view of what Surfing is. But it occurred

World Oceans Day

I awoke late this Sunny Sunday, having spent the night wrapping a job on the computer and getting to sleep at 6:30 AM. I pulled myself away from my girlfriend Donna who was doing her best imitation of a dead woman at 9:15 am. I had some coffee and rolled down the valley into downtown Ventura for a haircut appointment at 10:00 am with my Samoan pal Danny Moa. By twelve, after we had rapped out and talked a lot of story and I stood squinting in the broad light of high noon, I felt different. It wasn’t the haircut.

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