Where it all started

The letter that started it all

You'd be amazed what treasures the bottom draw holds. Today while sifting through a pile of paperwork for some all important tax return documents I found this, the letter that started it all.

In 1997 a good friend, Darryn Mountford, and I purchased a waterproof disposable camera. During the school holidays we set about surfing and shooting and now that I think about it I never used swim fins. Crazy but true. It was a "disposable" camera but being the MacGuyver kid/person I was/am I proceeded to ignore instructions dictating the camera should be returned to the store in its whole. I pried it open, wound the film back into the canister and off we went for developing. I remember the day, we finished the roll and went off to Vincent Park mall in East London. While waiting for the one hour developing and printing we had a lunch at Wimpy. I also clearly remember the disappointment when looking through the photos. What at the time seemed like a perfect barrel shot was in fact off centre and soft. With the developing and printing came a free roll of film which found its way back into the "disposable" camera thanks to my early understanding and makeshift darkroom inside my bedroom cupboard at night with all the lights turned off and strict instructions to all in the house that access to my room was forbidden.

There were one or two acceptable photos, when you are 17 finishing school and never seen a photo of yourself surfing, the most average of photos makes you smile and cringe. Smile because you finally have a photo, cringe because you realise how kooky you look.

The few acceptable ones, which I now understand go straight to the editors bin, were shipped off to ZigZag Surfing Magazine. There was no scanning of negatives, there was no scanning of photographs and there was definitely no email with the subject "check these shots". For months as soon as the newest edition hit the shelves I was flipping through the pages. At times I was phoning the surf stores to see if they had sneak peek editions. When told no the next phone call was to CNA because CNA had everything. I'd given up hope. I'd finished school and moved back to Durban. I thought I was never going to see those photos again. I hadn't even touched the "disposable" as I didn't have a friend to surf and shoot with anymore then one day an envelope arrives in the mail. It was from then editor, Jeremy Saville. The next issue I had my first ever surf photograph published.

I can't find the photo at the moment but I know I have the negative somewhere in my box of negatives. That was 1997 and now 2010 I am an ASP World Tour photographer. I've swum my home waters of Durban shooting New Pier, North Beach, Cave Rock the South Coast. I've balanced in a rubber duck shooting a semi-secret reef 5kms out to sea, I've bobbed in a boat shooting South Africas best big wave surfers at South Africas premier big wave break - Dungeons. I've swum Hawaii's Sunset, Off The Wall, Backdoor. I've swum out at Pipeline to "enjoy the scenery" on days I've just not wanted to shoot. Here I am 13 years after that first roll of film all high-tech using 10 frame per second digital cameras and recording high definition video with a camera the size of a matchbox. Here I am 13 years down the line having heard Confucius.

Find a job you enjoy, and you'll never work a day in your life

Dusting off the scanner

Years ago I bought a photographic film scanner and went bananas scanning every single piece of film I shot and processed. I'm in the actions of rescanning everything after dusting off this wonderful piece of machinery which has been sitting idle for 2 years. This included all the black and white film I shot during my single year of studying photography. Above is the digital contact sheet from a trip my class did into Durbans Gray Street. We were given filthy looks, we were stopped by police asking if we were aware of how dangerous it was to roam the streets camera in hand, it was even said to us that we were silly white people and to go home. I made some of my favorite photographs that day.

In that time of study I lucked into photographing music concerts local but mostly international. When photographing a music concert your time in the 'pit' is limited to the first three songs, four if the artist is generous. On one such occasion a local and by local I mean South African band who had some fame at their time thought they would pull a preMadonna and shorten that to one song. Where did that get them? No where. Never the less what I would do is have my digital and film body, digital for color and film for a single roll of black and white negative. I would shoot two songs in color as this was my main priority and then concentrate on my personal roll of BW. The very next day I would make a bee line to the college dark room and develop my roll of gold. Sometimes I'd done it just right others not so.

Below is the contact sheet from an Avril Lavigne concert back in 2005. I still have many more from many other concerts to scan. Sad news is I still have about 10 rolls yet to be developed because it is too costly to develop the film I shot it on.