Swellnet Sessions

From three months in Northern Indonesia to a month in Fiji, Gold Coast photographer, Ryan Williams, has been firmly tethered to the tropics. Whilst in Fiji he got hit by a cyclone and stranded without power, water or a toilet. He also scored the obligatory blue water barrels.

Here's the first Session in a short series.

If you live on the eastern seaboard the colour, or lack thereof, in these photos will be familiar to you. After three days of low cloud and persistent rain the coast has been wiped of colour and taken a steel grey apearance. Fitting then to run these shots by Steen Barnes. They were taken recently at an Illawarra area creekmouth and feature young Jack Matkowski, big Wade Budd and Dane Cartwright (getting solidly pitted) during a grey overcast day.

All photos by Steen. To see more of Steen's work visit his site.

It starts with the 3am crunch of tyres on a gravel driveway, boards in the back, minimal chat. Then thunder down the highway, toons on the deck, a cup of coffee, and warm to the day as the sun rises over an empty beach.

A few sessions on new terrain rounded out by a full-scale, take-no-prisoner bakery strike - Portuegese Tarts 'n all. Later bump into a few crew and have a sly sesh at a breakwall on the way home.

When this Duranbah sequence landed in front of me I was trying to identify who the surfer was. After all, with a smooth, mid-face transition into a long and well-ridden pit you'd think the fella would be sponsored, right?

If you've seen the photographic work of Steen Barnes on Swellnet you'll know that his images have an idiosyncratic look. Steen's photos are saturated with the orange hues of early morning surf sessions and the greenish tint of the local Wollongong water.

And then there's the surfers in the frame: almost exclusively kneeboarders, and always tearing the Wollongong waves to shreds. In this batch it's two of his favourite muses, Chayne Simpson and Albert Munoz, busting airs and very nearly breaking patellas (check Chayne's air sequence!).