This SlideShowPro photo gallery requires the Flash Player plugin and a web browser with JavaScript enabled.
(click the red icon in the lower right hand corner, or press the “F” key at any time, to switch to the full screen version)
AFTER THE STORM
…A life of Surf on the Outer Banks
The bad weather comes out of nowhere. Within hours, sometimes minutes, a perfect day at the beach–kids playing in the surf, girls in bikinis parading up and down the shoreline, middle-aged men tending fishing rods, beer in hand–turns into a raging tempest. The wind picks up, the temperature drops ten degrees in as many minutes, the barometric pressure plummets, and the sky takes on dark chiaroscuro tones, ominous against the traces of warm light disappearing on the horizon. Beach lovers, rudely awakened from their seaside reveries, gather their things and scatter like crows. In no time at all, the wind whips the ocean up into a froth of whitewater and salt spray. The picture-postcard shoreline of North Carolina’s Outer Banks has donned its alter ego: a raging, dark, but strangely beautiful land of cloud, wind,and blowing sand.
The storm will last a day, possibly three, maybe seven. Black clouds will hover ominously, the brisk ocean wind out of the northeast will permeate everything with its damp chill. Most folks will be driven indoors, to hibernate until the next patch of good weather.
But here and there, there are signs of life….
In front of Avalon pier, a rag-tag procession of pickup trucks, SUV’s, and beat-up sedans with racks on top rolls through the parking lot, each vehicle pulling up to a different spot along the bulkhead, and parking to face the sea. They will stay a minute or two, maybe ten or twenty, maybe an hour—engines running, tailpipe smoke wisping in the damp wind—their drivers warm inside, watching, waiting. A few intrepid fishermen brave it out on the pier, the platform trembling with each wave crashing through the rickety pilings, the spray shooting up through the planks and drenching their trousers. Clouds of seafoam roll down the beach, breakers lash against houses laid bare to the ocean’s fury from years of shoreline erosion.
Somewhere down the beach, a pack of young gremlins is out surfing the slop, bobbing up and down in the chunky soup, whooping and hollering as the sea tosses them around and whitewater sprays their faces. There’s little hope of getting a decent ride in conditions like this, but the kids don’t care; it’s better than staying inside playing video games. Red flags on the beach flutter furiously, reading “NO SWIMMING”…but no one said anything about surfing.
A woman in a raincoat walks past, her hand clasping tightly to the hood, body slanted sideways into the wind, a dog on a leash. A few gulls are swarming around something that has washed up in the storm.
Other than that, the beach is empty.
But inside houses all up and down the Outer Banks, surfers are listening to the mechanical voice coming from the NOAA weather radio, its uninflected drone creating a soundtrack for their anticipation: ”Waves. ten to fifteen feet. Winds. east-northeast. at. thirty-five to forty knots. becoming southwest. at. five to ten. by. Sunday.” Buoy reports, tide charts, surf forecast sites, the Weather Channel…the dedicated are poring over every last piece of information they can get, crossing their fingers that the swells will increase in size and duration and the wind will switch offshore, grooming the ocean’s surface into clean parallel lines. They live for the morning they will wake to find that the storm has passed on, and the raging sea has begun to clean up into beautiful, rippable, shackable walls of pure energy.
—————————————-
Without storms, there would be no surf. The winds generated by cyclones, hurricanes, and low pressure systems churn up the surface of the ocean; and the nastier the storm, the bigger the surf that is ultimately generated by it. As the waves on the open ocean crash into each other, their energy focuses into swells, directional pulses of energy moving just under the ocean’s surface, which close ranks and fall in to a single-file march to some distant shore. The further the shore, the more organized the swell becomes. But the longer the swell travels across the sea, the more it loses of the fierce energy that created it; and if it travels too far, it will eventually fade back into the sea. If, however, it finds itself confronted with a solid obstruction–a rocky point, a sandy beach, a barely submerged reef–it will crash and burn violently in an explosion of whitewater and curl, a never-ending expression of the life force that animates the universe.
It is this violent but beautiful death of the swell that makes possible the art of surf. The shape of the ocean floor as it rises to meet the coast pushes and sculpts the breaking swell into an infinite variety of surf; from fat, hollow, beachbreak barrels to long, sloping pointbreaks. As the wave breaks along the shore, it jacks up into a cylindrical wall before crashing over top of itself; along the fast-moving vertical edge of this wall, surfers explore a magical interplay of gravity and kinetic energy, fusing their movements with the changing shape and speed of the wave in a performance that is part dance, part communion, and part combat–with no small amount of showmanship and bluster from those who can do it well.
————————————–
The surf on the Outer Banks is of a variety generally termed “beach break” (as opposed to “reef break” or “point break”). The shoreline is one long, straight stretch of sand, with no bays, promontories, or hard stone of any kind to buffer the wind, or to hold the sand in place. What makes surfing possible here are small hill-sized bumps of submerged sand that collect around piers or form in random spots along the beach from the shifting ocean currents. These underwater dunes, or sandbars, lie just offshore, and as the tide goes out they get nearer to the ocean’s surface, forcing the incoming swells to jack up and break over top of them. After a particularly violent storm, the sandbars shift, requiring an exhaustive reconnaissance and re-mapping of the shoreline to find the spots where the wave is breaking the best. Once the surf begins to clean up after a storm, an extensive cell-phone network fires into action, as friends fill each other in on where they’ve checked and how it looks. On the morning of the clean-up, the hardcore may have driven as much as an hour or two on dawn patrol, anywhere from Corolla Light to Hatteras Light–and sometimes further south to Frisco if the conditions are favorable–trying to find the spot where the wave is breaking the best.
A good sandbar can last a year, sometimes longer; often a spot will die for a year or two and then re-emerge with a slightly different size and shape to it. Some die slow deaths, some die quickly in big storms. There are certain spots that consistently attract good sandbars, and other spots that just magically appear one summer or fall in unexpected places.
The window of opportunity for good surf on the Outer Banks is small. The surf starts off sloppy and confused, too big, too much whitewater….and slowly it becomes cleaner and cleaner…for an hour or two, maybe three, it’s perfect. Peaky A-frames coming in one after the other, enough for everybody, smooth as silk…Then, as soon as it comes together, it begins to die. The tide comes in, the swells diminish in size and power, maybe the wind shifts once again and blows everything out. “You missed it this morning” is a common gloat the hardcore like to throw out to their I-got-wasted-last-night-and-slept-til-noon brethren, who still manage to get out and have a good time surfing the tail end of it. The next day, the ocean will be flat, or choppy, or just not quite good enough to bother; and the surfers will disappear until after the next storm.
————————————-
The local crew on the Outer Banks is a diverse lot, from burnt-out punks to born-again Christians; from pre-teen gremlins to guys in their sixties and seventies. A number of strong women surfers represent the fairer sex, but the crew is predominantly male. There are summer surfers, Sunday surfers; guys who won’t surf if it’s too cold to trunk it; guys who will ALWAYS paddle out, even on the iciest days….there are brat packs and lone wolves, world-famous globetrotting professionals, and mellow stoners who just want to get wet and catch a ride. In the summer, there are tourists–loads of them–trying to figure it out on rented styrofoam boards, or clogging some spot with a surf school…and whenever the surf is really good, the Va Beach crew rolls in like a band of Turks, charging it at the best spots, pulling crazy aerial maneuvers, and generally acting like they own the place.
The level of talent is high; and at certain spots, if a heavy crew is out, it can feel downright intimidating if you don’t know what you’re doing. Generally, however, the vibe is friendly, or at the very least polite, and everybody is just stoked to be surfing. Many of us who live here have our own little spots that we keep going back to, just to have a wave to ourselves. They are not always the best spots, but they feel like home, and it saves time from running up and down the beach looking for a better wave. And besides, that’s where our friends will be. There are few more sublime moments to experience in life than that of sitting out in the lineup on a soft Outer Banks day with three or four friends, sometime around sunset, watching the world turn into a blazing canvas of reds, oranges, yellows, magentas, blues–sometimes even greens–and catching wave after wave as the day begins to fade. On a glassy evening, with just a touch of humidity in the air to obscure the horizon, the ocean reflects the colors in the sky so perfectly it feels as if you are swimming in a sea of light.
————————————
It was over the course of many such evenings that the idea for this photo essay took shape; after one too many perfect sessions, sitting out in the water, saying out loud to my friends, “God, I wish I had a camera right now,” I finally broke down and bought myself a waterproof housing. Of course, the sad reality is that you can’t just bring along your camera while you’re out surfing; it’s hard to paddle a surfboard when your hands are clutching a big heavy piece of glass, metal, and plastic. You have to make a decision: surf, or take pictures. So I haven’t done much surfing since I started this project. But I don’t mind really; truth be told I’m a much better photographer than I am a surfer, and for me the magic of surfing has always been about the feeling. I get just as much satisfaction from knowing, when I swim back to shore clutching my camera and sputtering water, that I’ve captured something special, some small shred of the essence of this waterlogged life out on the edge of the ocean. Bit by bit, session by session, the picture is coming together.
————————————-
A life of surf is not conducive to the rhythms of the workaday world. Surf has no schedule. It comes on a Monday morning as often as it comes on a Sunday afternoon–which is why very little ever gets done on time around here. If the surf is up, or the fish are running, responsibilities will get put on hold. Kids will play hookie, construction workers will walk off the job site, even realtors will sneak in a midday session. The work will get done, eventually; but the swell won’t wait for quitting time. You have to strike when it’s hot, even if it means pissing a few people off. Surf-consciousness breeds a certain nonchalance about the rest of the world that can drive outsiders crazy.
Sometimes it tests families and relationships, the surf life; but more often than not it builds them and solidifies them. Grandfathers go surfing with their grandkids, husbands and wives paddle out together, church groups and restaurants represent out in the water. It is a language that ties people together– talking about the last swell, the next swell, what the wind is doing, where you last had it good, where you’re thinking of going for your winter surf trip…
We are blessed to live here on the Outer Banks, we all know it. But like the surf itself, the very ground on which we live and build our homes is fickle. Every big storm takes a house or two with it. Up near the border with Virginia, an entire town called Seagull was overtaken by a moving dune almost a hundred years ago. We have blatantly ignored the warnings about houses built on sand, and some of us have paid dearly for it.
Life here is precarious; and temporary, we all know: one of these days, one of these storms will sweep through and blow this little strip of sand to smithereens. We all know it is coming. We joke about it, resign ourselves to it, construct possible scenarios for other lives in other places, should we ever lose our home here. Given sufficient warning, many of us will pack whatever we can into our trucks and head for the mainland; some of us, like the old sea-captains of yore, will just let the storm wash over us and take us out to sea; for all it has given to us, it seems only fitting that it would one day take our lives in return. Until that day, however, there are fish to catch, waves to ride, and many perfect days left to sit on the beach and stare off into the horizon, watching the weather change.
———————————–
A note on the music: The song “Don’t Change” was written and performed by Justin Rudolph, a senior at First Flight High School. Justin will be touring Australia after graduation, so you Aussies be on the lookout, make him feel at home…
Photographs: Chris Bickford
Website: www.chrisbickfordphoto.com
Music: Justin Rudolph – www.myspace.com/justrudolph
JIM:
the use of the word ’shit’ was as ‘bad things to shoot’ i meant that in an idiomatic way: that is most of the shit i do (as in, the work, way of living) is just that: the nuts and bolts of life…maybe i should have used a different idiomatic expression….sorry jim, but you’re the one who seems to have the bias…
for me, if a PJ is happy GREAT…I know LOTS AND LOTS who struggle with what they have to shoot day in and day out…like any job it can be draining…and exhausting…being a PRO photographer is just as rewarding and/or just as demoralizing as any job….
you have the bias…sorry, you tend to interpret what others write based on your experience….
sorry
b
typo: i meant “the use of the word ’shit’ was NOT meant as ‘bad things to shoot’ …but as things i shoot…when i describe my own work, i’ll say, ‘im working on some shit about memory”….hope that clarifies…I HAVE NO BIAS TOWARD ANY MEANS OF WORK OR ANY PHOTOGRAPHER….that wwould be your orientation…
b
i
JIM
I don’t think ALL PJs are frustrated art photographers..It’s really clear that you love what you do and that is a gift..and the same for your peers..I think it is a true blessing that you and they are content and creatively fulfilled and financially stable.
But your question was as to whether I / we really think that there is a lot of frustration on the part of many pros..and in my experience the answer is yes. (But I live in NYC and we do have our share of frustrated artists :)) Why do you think the dream of belonging to Magnum, for example, is still so prevalent? In part, I think it is because people have this concept that they will be paid to shoot what they love.
PATRICIA / CHRIS
I’ll try to leave it at that..
Work to live. Never just live to work. I am lucky i guess in that i get paid to take shitty pictures. Corporate nonsense for the most part. Its well paid jim (almost obscenely). I do it very well. I also make documentaries in a similar vein. None of this in any way relates to what i call ‘the work’. ie trying to make pictures that have some meaning to ME. I NEVER put my name to any of this work, preferring it to remain uncredited. I have no interest in these pictures or films other than the money they make that allows me to do what i do. For the most part they are just utter crap. Saying that, I do make them as well as i can, and the clients always love them, but then they are used to jobbing togs who really believe this kind of shit is spiritually fulfilling. This pays for me to be a bum most of the time, hanging round backstage at gigs, shooting portraits of friends and freaks, and travelling the world. Like I said Work to live. My life is very short (yours too maybe) and i dont intend to waste what i have left in being mundane. Its a really really big world out there.
Note 1
In support of jim,in a way.
My lab costs each week for my own personal work run about £200….out of my pocket.
My cameras and lenses at the moment run to about £25,000 or so……out of my pocket.
So yeah, in a way, without the corporate shit i probably wouldnt be able to maintain the stuff i do for ME.
But if i only did the corporate and the mundane, and if i thought that that was somehow ‘enough’ then i would throw it all in and go back to being a junkie. Seems just as empty to me.
Note 2
The illness defence
I am dying. Large cocktails of meds keep me alive, for the time being. So maybe my agenda and the way I attack life are related to that and may not be at all relevent to those who feel a need to put things by for their dotage. Most people are not as acutely aware of their mortality and so seem to live their lives for some future tommorow.
We have NOW. We should all use it in the best way we can.
PEACE
John
Thanks for that Jim, I wasn’t sure if you meant that the manipulation that Chris has done here with his essay was running the risk of becoming in some way old fashioned or dated as time passes and tastes change. I would have countered that argument with my assertion that, of course there is an element of fashion within photography, just as in any other field of human activity (remember flared trousers) but although this fact might anchor a photograph in a particular timeframe, it doesn’t take away its artistic or visual merit. Incidentally, I think that Chris’s work, shown here, will have a very long shelf life.
You seem to be saying that manipulation – any manipulation – is bad: “The only thing left is the skill and talent of the photographer” that manipulation will take over. I remember this argument from the early days of digital photography. Magazines; mainly non-photography magazines, would show images of e.g. a group of people with the heads switched to different bodies (you know the scenario). Photo magazines would bewail the lost innocence of photography; how the public would no-longer believe what was put before their eyes – ignoring the established photographic arts of burning, dodging, bleaching, montage etc.
I think we should set some ground rules here. Let’s try to separate the difference between manipulation as a means of obstructing or defacing the truth of a situation and manipulation as an attempt to set a particular mood or vibe or emotion that the photographer wants her / his audience to feel. What I previously called Artistic Licence (License). Examples of this could be the use of Black & White (which you don’t seem to mind, Jim) to adding grain, vignette and tone (as per Chris’s essay).
Where, specifically, do you draw the line Jim?
Do you dismiss photographs that don’t match your own standards of manipulation or can you appreciate them even though you would not, personally, take them “that way”?
You seem to be in danger of “if it’s not a daguerreotype it can’t be real photography” syndrome.
Apologies for so many questions Jim but I’m just attempting to see your point of view, which at the moment seems to be inconsistent and disjointed.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Bob, I do not think the discussion is about nomeclatura, being or not a photographer, and who is and is not. As I see it, and Chris brouhgt up this with the “making one’s own rule”: yes, it’s about rules. How much you may submnit to certain rules expected of you, and how much this may have you departing from, again to be short, your best/calling.
I read from you that photography is a calling altogether, no matter how some of your work might differe from the other, according to earning a living. Open question: is photography the calling, or is the true calling actually achieving your own voice?
Also, if we throw names of “own voice” succesful photographers, and how their early years went on, it is not exactly the same as talking about emerging photographers, which should matter the most to us, here, given the nature of our gathering.
Here, it is up to each one to honestly act themselves: am I bending the rules so my voice is/will be heard? Can I obey some rules (do the job you are paid for) and make my own at the same time? How long can I do this? Bob, this is not labels, this is about questions we all ask ourselves (sometimes, not so consciously), photographer or not, as we went into the world.
Thanks for dropping the name of Arantxa, is her work in Cambodia available on the net, some of at least? Which paper does she work for?
Trent Parke. Not contradicting you, Chris, just to add to your point. This guy was the real thing since he started, just like David (Magnum people do recognize this unflinching calling in their acceptance standards). His sport work was not done on the side to pay the bills, it put him on the “map” and probably was formative (didn’t he say so himself?).
JOHN GLADDY
I’m sad to hear where your wise perspective on life comes from. I’ve been struck by your clear-sightedness and disinclination to waste time or energy with discussions that go around in circles and get nowhere in the end. I hope you are not in pain and are finding some degree of peace in the midst of it all. I also hope you have the support of family and friends that you need and deserve. Please stick with us as long as you can. You bring a lot of experience and wisdom to our discussions. Besides you have a wonderfully quirky sense of humor.
Patricia
Jim I am not “blinded by the future” or whatever phrase you used earlier. I am not some green, wide-eyed child. I own a business and a house and work hard to pay the bills. I have no idea what the future holds. Of course I am optimistic, that’s what keeps me striving. I am not looking to “set the world on fire” as you said. I’m just trying to make some good photo projects happen, and with any luck, make a few books and sell a few prints. If I make money off of them, so much the better.
Of course advances in technology have made things “easier”. That’s the way of human progress. But the measure of a good picture is not how hard it was to make it, it’s whether or not it speaks to the viewer. Obsessing about the “means” by which a picture was made blinds you to the actual impact of the picture itself. And so, to some extent, this discussion is moot, but since this is a photography site, and we are all interested in technique, we can have a good time discussing it here.
I’m not sure what’s left to be said about the subject, we seem to be going around in circles. I’m all for discussion, and this has been a good one, but unless you have something more to say than the same tired old arguments, I’m not really interested anymore.
john g:
that is it….only NOW….indeed.
end of tale.
cheers
b
John Gladdy, keep living my friend! I have some small inkling of what you are going through, being a longtime sufferer of CFS and a fairly severe sleep disorder; I travel with boxes of supplements and a few choice meds. Not in any danger of dying (any more than anyone else), but every day is a struggle for my health nonetheless. You are courageous to keep working and traveling and taking such great photos in the face of your own mortality. Keep living, your photos are photos of record. I’m a fan.
Bravo Chris! Just got back from a surf trip with Philippa and crew and didn’t have ‘net access, so I’m seeing the slideshow for the first time. Stunning work my friend.
The prints you showed us at the bar in DC were the subject of conversation in the line-up. Everyone’s still raving about them. Of course they’re all art collectors, so that makes you an “art photographer” !! Be proud, my brother. Celebrate your “artsy-fartsy” superficiality!!
And keep making pictures
John G; “We have NOW”, how true. Looking at your website you seem to be having a good now: keep it up. You show quite a few people who are of an age that clearly “should know better”; it’s so refreshing to see that they don’t!!!
Best wishes,
Mike.
Beautiful images, well written! Nice.
I fully understand what you have said here about it being “one or the other”, you can’t just bring a camera into every situation in life, for one reason or another. Often you must make the choice, I think this was an excellent decision; one that will bring the act of surfing, and all that surrounds it, that much closer to your being!
You do terrific work Chris, look forward to seeing more!
Cheers, Jeremy
Tony Skater, next time you’re taking me to CR…this winter is killin’ me!! I’ll be up your way soon, will be in touch!
Jeremy, you’re right; it’s always a tough call, to be a “participant” or an “observer”. You’re always riding that edge; being a participant gives you the appreciation for the subject matter and gets you “in”, but you’ve always got to be standing outside of yourself looking down on the situation and know when you need to break the flow just enough to grab the shot. Or, you just go in guns blazing and strike up a conversation afterward so everybody walks away cool…I learned that one from Harvey…I think his actual quote was, “shoot first, make friends later”…with surfers it’s actually pretty easy because they all wanna be rock stars anyway, and if you’re clearly working the situation, they figure they may get their photo in a mag or something…
Chris,
I am just back from 3 weeks away on Europe… I had a computer that for reasons that I still do not understand would not allow me to post any comments…. weird…the “submit” buttom is simply not there….Any way, not that important. What IS, is that I absolutely love your essay… I must have watched it 20 times… I put the music loud, the big screen and I feel I am there, on the beach, feeling the waves so strong that these almost penetrate into the town, the sand, the freedom, the frienship, this feeling also of being small in front of nature, the elements… Thank you Chris for sharing this work. Love love it!!!!! On a more personal note, I have been wondering if you still plan on going to Brazil??? Have you been yet? Is this still progressing? Hope to see you sometimes my friend!
Cheers,
Eric
amazing and inspiring work there!!!
Hi Chris
I just wanted to say that i really enjoyed this essay. It most certainly had an impact on me, there were some proper ‘decisive moments’ in there (see the dog in the hula hoop, the surfer beteen two buildings, the surfer framed in wave as it wraps around the camera). I really like your style too, i find it very pleasing on my eye.
I hope to see more in future, many thanks
David
Chris,
Man it “burns” to look at these from a world away in my hotel room in Bahrain. Homesick for all of it. Makes me realize how much I love our little corner of the world. All I can think about now is coming home to spring surf season, my favorite time. I cant wait!
Nice work!
Happy hour next week dude!
Bry
this is great. way to go Chris Bickford!
uFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF … no words … !!!
another on worth digging up for a Captain Cook