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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
DAH..
I have a question, will write under times and timing..
david b, I expressed an opinion. I also wished Chris luck and said that I hope he is successful. He is chasing his passion. That’s never bad.
I’m always pretty clear to say “I don’t like it.” And, then say why I don’t like it. I get the feeling that “I don’t like it,” isn’t acceptable here. I could only comment on the ones I like. Which I’ve also done. Would that be preferable?
panos! It’s not a secret. I actually had the link attached to my name here, but realized I was using James on the laptop and Jim on the desktop computer, so changed them both to Jim and didn’t re-connect the link. I’m not trying to hide.
hey jim – i have and do express enjoyment at your being here.. i think it´s funny..
Guys, there’s nothing wrong with not liking something. It’s a free country.
of course !! and i never said jim had to like it..
AKAKY…JIM …ALL
of course it is ok not to like something….and ok to express it right here as well…
rarely does anyone ever give Jim a hard time for not liking something..many writers here do not like one photo or essay or another….so, it is not about the dissent at all..it is only about the reasons often given for the “not liking” that set some folks “off”..or, the “jump to a conclusion” that may seem unreasonable to some (me included)..but but and but, i have no problems….i agree with David B..fun to have Jim here…after all, we do not HAVE to respond to Jim if we do not want…..freedom to write…freedom to respond…
cheers, david
Journalist VS. Art Photographer > W. Eugene Smith anyone??? ;)
Some VERY nice transitions there — really dig the way you put us into the frame through perspective shift!
Cheers
Seth
Chris…
awesome stuff
i’d like to see some more of your text in your pictures
for example this:
”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.”
cheers
just showed beate, my lover, your piece chris.. b has only recently begun to photograph.. i bought her a g9 and she has taken to it well.. :ø)
anyroad – her comments ran like this..
‘wow.
what a life.
god.. it looks so peacefull.
i guess it’s the music too..
brilliant..’
:ø)
David B.
Beate might be interested to see a less peaceful side that shows a little of what, I imagine,
Chris had to work with.
Breathtaking! No.3 is something not of this world. Solaris may be?
thanks mark..
reminds me of childhood and teen days down the south west of england fighting the undercurrent with my boogie board, although the scale was much different.
that link makes chris and his work seem all the more remarkable.. given the working conditions..
it´s the lifestyle which i think chris has captured very well, that transcends the power and fury of the ocean.. the dual play between the mellow and the furious which i really love.. duality is a fact for all and i love seeing it represented.
also – any work which i know involves a great deal of risk, personal discomfort or technical stress really impresses me when it is presented in a way that makes it look effortless.. and chris has achieved that for me.
again – i would love to see more of the surf and also of the lifestyle.. a really deep dig into that spit of sand slowly eroding by natures unique indifference.. maybe one of the collapsed houses.. certainly some more of the tribal elements of the surf clan..
this taste, for me, is just that – a taste.. and if i HAD to prod chris in just one way it would be to get even more down for a book.. clearly there is enough for print sales in short runs.. a magazine piece or newspaper supplement.. and perhaps the money earn´t from them could be used to carry on.. keep on..
chris – apologies for talking about you in the 3rd person..
hope our paths cross.
wikkd n bad
Respc´
david
I don’t have time to write a bunch, but my reaction after my first viewing is that I love it! I live on the shore myself in Southeastern, CT, and there’s something so special that you connect with on the shoreline…though I’m not a surfer, I identified with the love of the water and need for it. I’ll write more later when I get the chance to catch up on the comments….
I really enjoy this essay Chris. I think the music adds an interesting dynamic to it as well. The images are both storytelling and graphically pleasing. You seem to have a clear vision for what you wanted with this project and did it. It’s a fresh look for me, and in my opinion it works. As someone above said, some of the images are other-worldy, I love that. Keep up the good work.
hi Chris, very nostalgic essay, by the way you photograph seems like sweet old times
Jim,
its not about not liking things its about the tone of your “contributions”.
Anyway, nice response from Chris, looks like the story has sold and it looks yet again your photographic instincts are so far off the mark it really makes me wonder about who you claim to be.
One thing about money. Is this your primary or sole interest in photography? Is it not possible for you to grasp the idea that not everyone shoots an essay with the interest of selling it? Money is a CRASS thing to bring up, yet you bring it up over and over again, Jim. The essay Ive been shooting never was meant to make me any money. I would be happy if it never did. Then again I wouldnt be sad if it did, but money is never on my mind. Many of my images from the essay were invited by Getty to be part of their stock library. i would never dream of turning them over to them. Not everyone shoots with money as the primary goal, Jim. I dont know about Chris’ reasons for shooting this, but Im sure there are people who have had stories posted (Bob, Patricia, Panos, yunghee? others?) who are inspired by their passion and vision and not the green. I rarely make disparaging comments about people’s work but Jim, looking at the photos in your link, I dont see any passion. Its standard local newpaper fare….have you ever had a passionate, personal project inspired by a subject you love more than money? Or has it always been weddings and county fairs for you?
Chris, I’ve just looked at your website: very impressed. Good, strong, photographs. I will look closely tomorrow (now Wed, 23:25 in U.K.).
Best wishes,
Mike.
Chris -
BEAUTIFUL work, well seen, overall excellent with some perfectly poetic images.
(this jim p truly has his head up his arse; i looked at his overlit saccharine images, opposite of this, no wonder he doesn’t like these) (i anonymously think jim that you are the squarest of the square.)
Chris,
I like everything here: images first (post-production included), the music and the introduction (good prose and really informative: it helped me a lot – together with google earth ;) – to understand OBX environment… surf = california for me up to today, but I live closer to the mountain than to the sea, sea which has no such waves by the way).
Focus is clearly on surfers, but at the same time your vision seems to expand including the larger shore community, and this could be a direction to go further.
Rafal, if you can’t make a living you can’t shoot everyday. If you can’t pay the bills, it doesn’t matter how much passion, determination and talent you have. Modern life is expensive. Equipment is expensive. Travel is expensive. I understand you think talk of money is crass. But it’s just the real world.
Wrong, Jim.
I shoot every day. I make more than a good living. I just dont make a living from shooting which makes no difference to me. Infact, its good, Im free to do what I want, to satisfy myself and my vision instead of an editor. I dont need to travel to shoot, I can shoot without going anywhere far. You are making leaps to false conclusions. Tell Sally Mann or Nan Goldin that you have to travel to shoot. Sorry Jim, open your eyes. Not everyone is interested in what you are interested in. Tell Patricia she had to travel to shoot.
I’ll just comment and say, I know I saw some POV shots which I really liked. I also think another edit was in order as some of the images repeated, though admittedly they were great images, but did they add anything? No.
Not sure about the technique, Jim does have a point, not sure how I can add anything there, would like to see a version of the essay in colour in a straight from from B&W. I want to see those skies again in colour though.
Rafal, I never wanted to do any other work but photography. So I have to make a living at it. Hobby photography is great, though. I know several hobby photographers that are better than many pros.
I assumed that most people presenting work here aspired to be working pros, making a living from photography. If many are hobby photographers, I’ll look at the stuff differently.
Ben, I know Chris has seen Autio’s work because we were looking at it on my laptop in New York. I can’t even begin to express how much of a fan I am of her beach work, both above and below the water line, (why oh why is she not in Magnum with her partner?) and you brought up an interesting point about underwater shots and the lack of them here. I meant to ask about this as well. I see a lot of Trent in Chris’ work too but no “copying,” just influence, and Parke certainly has his iconic Nikonos shots as well.
I also did not see something else I kind of expected – the “just the feet” shot which I seem to see a lot of now whether it’s diving into a swimming hole or a wave.
So Chris, did you make a conscious decision not to shoot underwater up because you felt “it had been done,” or ….? Interested.
Jim,
its possible to be a non pro and not be a hobby photographer. Im not sure if Partricia is making money from her work but calling somebody like that a hobby photographer is ridiculous. Her work has depth and power your pro work is clearly lacking.
Pros are called pros when they make the majority of their income from photography. It’s simply a definition. You can’t be a “Pro” if you don’t make a substantial percentage of your income from it.
Would you prefer “Amateur” to “Hobby Photographer?
enough about jim’s work!! what about chris’s? jeez….. take this elsewhere please…
Rafal, once again, I’m a Professional Photographer because I make a living from it. The term Pro says nothing of my ability or talent. Only that someone is willing to pay me to do it.
I’d prefer photographer. Period. It is a word that defines anyone who takes photos on a regular basis.
Ben,
ofcourse, you are right.
ben, what else would you like to say about Chris’ work?
The problem with leaving an essay up for a week is that most of what is going to be said about the essay will occur in the first day or two. Then you start to get folder drift. Which seems to be David’s concern with allowing comments.
its not about what i want to say jim, i’ve thought about and written two decent comments; its just frustrating (and possibly more frustrating for chris?) to come on to this thread hoping to read some discussion about an interesting set of photographs, and instead get more pathetic posturing and inane nonsense from you, (designed to antagonise and attention seek) and sadly people responding to it. just like i am doing it now! this isn’t my forum by any means, but I’ve asked 3 times for the conversation to be kept on topic, and its been ignored; some might say “that’s the internet for you”. i would say, that’s pathetic and self centred.
ben, I only respond to people who seem determined to prove to me that my opinions are wrong (an odd idea, since opinions are just that). If my opinions are crap, why even confront me about them? Weird.
My point is that once everyone has said all they are going to about the topic of a thread, either the thread is going to die or it is going to drift. You can’t force people in a thread to stay on topic once all the comments on the topic are exhausted.
Go ahead. Try it. Work up an interesting and extended exchange of the posters here on the subtleties of Chris’ work now that they have all commented.
Maybe David is right. Maybe there should be no comments. Or, perhaps, only one comment per poster.
Yes, well it can lead to bedlam ben.
ben, here’s the way to solve your problem. Everyone ignore my comments. Then the thread can continue as pure as the driven snow. Seems simple to me. I’m happy, I get to say what I think, and you are happy, because the thread proceeds on topic. How about that?
i don’t have anything more to say jim, but thanks for proving my point.
Ben ;))
Ben/Tom: :)))…great discussion about Narelle’s work…it’s funny, cause, you bet, EVERY surf or water pic/story I see now too, immediately i think of not only 7th Wave (a brilliant brilliant book, and sort-of, kind-of prefer her pics to T’s in that body of work), but all her work, including her new stuff from The Place In Between and all those gorgeous overhead shot geometries…..and when Tamara was visiting us last year, she and stayed up late into the night talking about this: the interesting thing about the 2 of them, T off to Magnum…but shit, N is still represented by Vu and fuck it, even if T’s name is the ‘more known’, both their work is just flat out brilliant and inspired…cant help but think, this time around, Narelle’s color has inspired T, as he made the turn from B/w to Color…
and so, yes, i think it would be great to hear Chris chime in about ‘underwater’ pics…why none?…though, for me, it wouldn’t really makes sense, as surfing is about above water and avoiding being taken under water ;))))….pic #22 is almost underwater ;)))))))….
so, good chat: how much of an influence has Trent and Narelle’s work been…how important 7th Wave, and why no-submerged (hope it’s cause surfing is above ;)) )…
cheers
running
b
Well, I guess it’s just one of those twists of fate, today we had some of the best surf on the Outer Banks we have had since the beginning of the year, albeit hovering in the mid-40′s in the water…the air was an unseasonable 70 degrees…the clocks have sprung forward, the days are getting longer, and after such a brutal winter and despite an abysmal economy–which hit our town earlier than most because we are fueled by the “disposable” income of tourism–the beach was alive today with hope and smiles.
Hopefully I can steer the conversation here back to something worthwhile by commenting a little bit on my process and responding to some of the very good comments people have left here.
Ben, Young Tom was actually the one who turned me on to Narelle Autio’s work, after seeing After the Storm this December at the Loft. We sat and looked at her stuff on his laptop. I had seen Trent’s work from the same project on the Magnum site, but her stuff really blew me away, I think mainly because it was in color. And Young Tom, it wasn’t a conscious decision not to shoot underwater–matter of fact I have bought a pair of goggles for just that purpose…it’s just too cold at the moment to keep your head underwater for more than a couple of seconds. It’s a style that has been explored by a number of surf photographers, so it won’t be breaking any new ground if I get a few good shots, but I am intrigued by the Carravagio-esque tones that shooting underwater can capture and hope to put my own spin on it once the water warms up a bit.
David Bowen, you are spot on in terms of where the project should go, and that’s what I’m hoping to do more of this year, spend a little more time hanging out with different characters, legends, and local heroes…I have more environmental shots that got edited out for this presentation but which could be good for a book. We’ll see what the next year holds.
On the same note, Stelios, your comments duly noted; I would like to get some evocative photos of “the storm” itself, maybe with some lonely characters on the beach or pier…
As to whether this is “art photography” or “photojournalism”, I kinda hope that it’s both, or neither…
I’ve got a few comments to make about post-processing and “grain”, but I’ll post all of this in pieces so it doesn’t get too long…
Scratching salt from my sun burned skin…bleach hair…the sound of the ocean, waves that come and go..seagulls…hang fives…waves breaking against the rocks…freezing water (who cares?)…adrenaline…catching the wave forming…riding it untill the end…the girls on the beach commenting wich surfer is the best…the girls practising with the boys…the scraches under the arms due the surf suit…blue lips from being hours in the water…chiken skin…cool sweaters made of wool…walking on the sand and dunes…late at nigh fires on the beach…someone always playing guitar…laughting all the time…music playing…beers and whisky to warm up or cold down…Winter and Summer on the beach with friends and dogs around…the smell of the ocean… dry sand under the feet…
So many memories come along with this essay Chris! Thank you so much! I loved your choice for black and white and the way you processed your photos. Also the photos done on the water are really good. Surf’s up! :)
“I am not especially interested in anonymous photography, or pictorialist photography, or avant-garde photography, or in straight, crooked or any other subspecific category of photography; I am interested in the entire, indivisible, hairy beast—because in the real world, where photographs are made, these subspecies, or races, interbreed shamelessly and continually.”- John Szarkowski
I think Szarkowski is bang on the money here – and (unwittingly?) it seems like you are in line with him chris; why can’t journalism be art? and surely journalistic photography can perform it’s purpose better by being artistic (whatever that is…)
Anyway – it sounds like there is going to be plenty to explore in your project Chris; My experience of surf photography is limited, but some of your images made me think about the movie “Dogtown and Z Boys” – its mainly about skateboarding of course, but the initial sequences chart the early days of surfing in LA, (Venice I think…). I think by casting your net wide and pulling in more biographical threads, you’ll be able to make the story more intimate and personal – an aspect that is often lacking in sports photography, the temptation being to concentrate on the action. it seems that as a sport, surfing transcends human effort and achievement, and becomes more of a lifestyle, in a similar way to other sports where the “results” are not so easily defined – mountaineering and rock climbing spring to mind.
i did read an interesting article about Surfing being used as a healing tool for children with autism – it was in the Guardian newspaper over here in the UK a year or so ago. I found a website here:
http://www.surfershealing.org/index.html
I’m sure you will have heard about it – while it may not be of use to your current project (due to location etc) perhaps it could be something else that has photographic value?
In response to people who wanted to see this project in color, or without as much post-processing, I respect your opinions, but you’ve got to trust me that this project was meant to be presented in warm, ciaroscuro, black and white tones. Those of you who are familiar with any of my other work know that for the most part I am a color photographer with a big “C”…But this project had to be black-and-white. I had always conceived it that way, as anyone who wants to jump into the way-back machine and read my old Road Trips proposal from May of ’08 can see. As a matter of fact, I did, in spite of myself, start shooting and processing in color and almost gave up the project in the early days because I wasn’t happy with what I was getting. Once I converted a few of the choice photos to black-and-white, though, the piece came alive. So there you have it. If you still think the project should be in color, you can come on down and shoot it yourself, I’ll lend you a wetsuit…
Now on the subject of “grain”…
I know I’m not fooling anybody into believing that I shot this thing with uprated tri-x or anything like that. The grain is digital, and was added in postproduction to every photo. Why? Well there are many reasons…
The first and simplest reason is that I like it. I like the look of it, and I like what it does to the photos. It breaks them up into little pointillist puzzles, and it encourages the eye to do its own construction work to put the pieces together. There is a reason that Monet, Seurat, and many of the great painters of their era were inspired by the graininess of early photography and started incorporating a similar style into their paintings, and there is a reason that from the early Pictorialists on photographers have exploited the use of grain. It does something to a picture, it does something to the eyes. In a way, it lays bare the essential magic of picture-making by making it obvious what is happening; thousands (or millions) of different-colored dots are coming together to form a cohesive whole. Kind of the way the universe works…
Then, of course, there are the cultural/mnemonic associations that grainy photographs carry. Grain is nostalgic, it is old (because of course nowadays we can take pictures that have zero perceptible grain)…it makes us think of earlier times…and this is part of the feeling I’m working on in this piece. A sense of memory, of time and timelessness, of reverie and dreams, of something that is precious because it is fleeting.
While I’m at it, I can’t forget the most obvious reason, and that is that the OBX is a very grainy place. If you ever come here, you will know what I mean. Sand gets into everything. I have sand in my bed, sand in my shower, sand in my car, even my computer has grains of sand on it.
There are also technical reasons to use grain: it softens the pixelation and artifacting of digital, it increases apparent sharpness, it smooths out digital banding, which gets very pronounced in heavily vignetted and dodged-and-burned photos such as these…but maybe I’m not supposed to talk about stuff like that, because some asshole will say that it’s “cheating” or something.
The way I see it, if you are going to shoot digital–and almost all of us shoot digital these days–you need to learn how to USE digital. And that means learning how to expose it, how to process it; learning how it behaves in different situations; learning how to use the amazing tools at your disposal in Photoshop and RAW file processing…it also means learning how to reference film techniques, how to duplicate them, and how to throw them out the window when necessary…it’s pointless to try to act like you’re still shooting kodachrome and you can’t do anything to enhance the photo once you’ve clicked the shutter. A straight digital file, with no postprocessing, is just plain ugly, and if you don’t process your digital files, you should go back to shooting film and drop it off at the lab.
It’s all about using the tools you have to get the effect you want. I am very conscious of the effects I am creating in these photographs. I am not using post-processing as any kind of “crutch” or just adding grain and vignetting in some kind of knee-jerk way. Yes, there is a certain visceral sense of “I just like it that way”, but as I hope you can tell from this post, I can back the intuitive use of such effects with very solid and deliberate reasoning. Not that I should spend so much time dissecting my own work, but in light of the discussion I figure I might as well, maybe we can get some more interesting dialogue out of it rather than the same old poo-poing by grandpas, fundamentalists and curmudgeons…
I fear I sounded a little negative at the end of that last post. I must say that I really appreciate the dialogue and commentary I’ve gotten so far. There was just a point early in the evening when it was deteriorating a little bit.
Sofia, have you been hanging out in my neighborhood? We used to have the best bonfires down here, everybody playing guitar and singing ten-part harmonies…maybe this summer we’ll revive them.
Ben Roberts, you are right, I think the people have spoken in terms of the project getting a little more biographical. And “Dogtown”…that movie is iconic, revolutionary, an instant classic. I wouldn’t dare to be spoken of in the same breath as those boys…
“The first and simplest reason is that I like it. I like the look of it, and I like what it does to the photos.”
That is all that matters…
No Chris I haven’t been playing in your neighborhood. Surfers are a tribe anywhere in the world, it’s a comunion with nature and friendship that once your in it, you won’t forget. I almost grew up in the beach because I live in Portugal which has a big coastline and lots of good spots to surf. It’s a natural thing here to surf, kitesurf, bodyboard, scubadive etc. It will be a waste not to profite ftom our nature and sun :)
Regarding the processiing discussion (which I only knew it was happening because I read your post. I never have the time to read all the comments so sorry if this was said before) I only have to add that no matter what you do to your photos what matters to me when I see photographs is the end result. They are your babies, you grow them the way you think is the best to meet your feelings and experiences. Photoshop, cameras, lenses, labs are only tools to creativity. If people like the end result or not that’s not in your hand. It’s like painting you may like or hate Van Gogh. As long as you do a body of work coming from your heart, soul and guts and that’s honest regarding your subject and your intentions…let the dogs bark and the caravan will passes through ;)
Ah, Portugal…some of the best waves in the world, at least so far as I’ve seen in the magazines. Where are you in Portugal? I saw a photo of a surf spot in Lisbon next to a big castle on a rock. I’d love to go there…
That’s probably Cascais near Lisbon, i’m in the other side of the river, with a bigger coastline and no rocks. Come when you wish, no need to bring your board, we have plenty here :)
I may take you up on that. Hey, I looked at your Love Motels piece on flickr…wow, that’s really good! have you done anything with that?
Thanks. Yes, I’ve publish it in a magazine as a suggestion for valentine’s day (like dare in valentine’s day or surprise your wife/husband and leave the kids elsewhere for a night), along with a text from a journalist with who I work sometimes. It was fun to do it believe me! But it’s a small report, not any personal projects Things to pay the bills :)
You should think of maling a book with your work displayed here, or an wxhibition. That grain will look superb in big prints.It will give eben more the notion of sandy atmosphere. Don’t give up and dig.