The Emotional One

Andy Irons, France, 2005

“I’d say this is my most ‘famous’ shot. There must have been around forty people shooting on this day, despite it being late afternoon with pretty horrible light. I went right to the other end of the beach to see if I could make the best of a pretty sucky situation, and set up next to a Billabong photographer. Let me tell you something – surf photographers, they love to chat. They’ll talk and talk, but always have one eye on the horizon so they know when a set is coming in. This guy next to me though, he wasn’t paying any attention to the water when this moment happened. I’d only just made the transition to digital when I took this, which was pretty lucky because the frame was washed out, and I was able to bring it back in post.

“I see this now as a small moment of him frozen in his prime”

“That’s when I saw that the surfer I’d photographed – and who made this wave, by the way – was Andy Irons. At the time, he was the best in the world. I sent it to his sponsor, Billabong. ‘Ah, you’re going to charge us big for this, aren’t you,’ they said. I got around $4000 for the image and they used it in some global campaigns. I later heard from one of the Quiksilver photographers that when Kelly Slater saw it, he said, “Right, I need to get a shot like that.” With what happened with Andy later on in his life [Andy died from a ‘heart attack and acute mixed drug ingestion’ in 2010], I see this now as a small moment of him frozen in his prime.”

The Trippy One

Micah Lester, Thurso in Scotland, 2011

“We only had two waves for this entire session with Micah. This was shot on the first, and on the second one he broke his ankle. The water colour is mad. That golden, Irn-Bru tone? That’s from the Scottish peat coming out of the river. It’s so different from anywhere else.”

The Painful One

PMPA in Ireland, 2000

“Twenty years ago, people started to wake up to the idea of how sick Ireland is for waves, but it still took a lot to tempt a surfer to climb down a cliff to ride somewhere like PMPA, in Bundoran. Now, you can bet you’ll see a line-up of 20-or-so local chargers out here. It’s one of those secret spots that everyone knows about. On this trip, we were with South African journalist Craig Jarvis and a couple of other guys. Craig was surfing, but got lipped and had to fight his way to the reef. That’s when he started waving at us. We just waved back, but soon realised something might be wrong.

“Turns out, he’d ripped his ‘rectal sheath’, which is essentially the bit between a guy’s legs where the balls retract back into”

“We finally saw that he couldn’t lift his legs up to climb the 20ft cliffs out of there. Turns out, he’d ripped his ‘rectal sheath’, which is essentially the bit between a guy’s legs where the balls retract back into. He’d basically done the splits off that wave and landed on his bollocks, tearing some of the tissue inside him. We got him to the doctor, by which time the entirety of his upper thighs were black with blood flowing under his skin. The doctor was laughing, though. He had no idea how he’d done it.”

The Sketchy One

Dan Joel, Mexico, 2006

“This is a little shore-break near Puerto Escondido, where one of my mates had been held up at gunpoint two months before we arrived. Some local bandits robbed him of his boards and camera kit, but the cops later found and arrested them. When my mate and his crew went down to the police station, they were offered a big stick and told to get on and do what they like with the thieves. Obviously, they were pretty confused – they got their gear and got out of there. I was there with Dan Joel and Ian Battrick, on a beach completely alone and with nobody else in sight. This wave broke my camera housing after throwing me over the falls. Whilst I was freaking out as it was a new camera, I didn’t notice the next wave coming in, which absolutely detonated on me and broke my ribs. I got the shot, though.”

The ‘Lightbulb Moment’ One

Craig Sage, Mundaka In Spain, 2001

“This is where I learned how painful hesitation can be. When you’re in the ocean, you need to make decisions fast, and to stick to them – it can be the difference between going over a wave and getting smashed by it. This was shot on the week of the World Tour, which was supposed to be taking place but had been forced to cancel as the Twin Towers terror attacks had taken place.

“This was shot on the week of the World Tour, which was supposed to be taking place but had been forced to cancel as the Twin Towers terror attacks had taken place”

The guy in the shot is Craig Sage, the owner of the surf shop in Mundaka. I had a niggling feeling that I was in the wrong spot, and stalled between staying put and moving somewhere new. That’s all it took to get sucked over the lip of a wave and driven to the bottom, where I felt my knee totally blow out. I was lucky though – Aussie surfer Mick Campbell broke his back on the very same wave. Before I got hit, I managed to get a bunch of nice shots. A lot of photographers won’t bother shooting the local guys – they only shoot the pros they’re with. But if someone’s charging, I’m gonna get a picture. This shot’s just been used in a History of Mundaka book, too.”