The Photographer

One day our mate Dave turned up at the surf with a camera. We gathered around and went ooh and aah and expressed great admiration for the contraption, and marveled at the wonders of modern technology. He informed us of his intention to take snapshots in the water, and assured us he was confident he would be able to pull it off. We frowned, scratched our noses and rubbed our chins thoughtfully. It seemed like an enterprise fraught with difficulty. We didn’t doubt his talent, skill and ability, but the challenges appeared considerable. With supreme indifference Dave shrugged off our reservations. ‘It’ll be right’, he said, ‘just wait and see.’

So we nodded our agreement, and proceeded to watch the spectacle unfold. Being, of course, more than willing to be of assistance we lent him a hand getting all the equipment out of his van, and helped him carry it all down to the beach. We left him there to sort things out, and paddled out onto the water into the surf, glancing back over our shoulders periodically with niggling unease and mild concern for the practicality of the endeavour, the apparent risks involved, and the welfare, safety, and, ultimately, sanity of our mate.

We sat on our surfboards, caught a few waves every now and then, and kept an eye out for Dave. Now Dave is by nature not only a determined and courageous character, he is also admirably dexterous on the water, often switching stance from goofy to natural and back again in the middle of a bottom-turn, cut-back or re-entry with a hopping skill and style that would put many a kangaroo to shame.

He certainly needed all his talent, agility and innate sense of balance on that day. Slack-jawed, mouths wide open, eyes popping out, forgetting to breathe, our hearts in our throats we watched him as he pushed his board out into the breakers, loaded up to the eyeballs with photographic equipment and paraphernalia, with him perched precariously on top of it all. In defiance of all laws of nature, possibility and probability he found the sweet spot in a quiet patch of water, often referred to locally as Switchfoot Alley in his honour, stood up on his board, swaying dangerously, and, exerting incredible caution, control and restraint, erected a tripod on the middle of his board.

He placed the camera on top of it, and draped a heavy-looking black curtain over the top of it. Next he poured a shiny, silvery glistening substance onto a tray on a long pole, and lit a match, one of those water-proof ones that will burn in a cyclone and will refuse to go out even at a depth of ten meters under the ocean.

‘Right, all of yous mob’, he called out, ‘catch a wave and show me some tricks, and smile at the camera! Everyone say “cheese”!’.

And he stuck his head under the black curtain-thing, dunked the dangerously spluttering match into the white shiny substance and with a crackle, a flash, a boom and a column of billowing black smoke history was made.

Since that day he has been pointing his camera at any and all things that he deems worthy of his photographic attention, and the results speak for themselves: true works of art, born from the restricted vision he has retained in his one remaining eye after that first explosion on the water on that fateful day. He did eventually work out the appropriate doses for the flashworks, and after only minor repeated sojourns in the local hospital and relatively insignificant plastic surgery, he became an absolute expert in the use of his camera for recording works of watery wonder, becoming before long highly skilled at, as he fondly put it, whipping it out.

Who knows what he’ll do next. We have suggested taking out life insurance.