As a Gold Coast based surf photographer, trying to stand out in a heavily saturated industry is a difficult thing. Shooting from the water for me has become my niche with only a small percentage of photographers willing to risk life and limb bobbing in the impact zone during a swell for the shot. Landscape imagery, or any shots from the land for that matter have never been a strong point of mine but on this particular day I took one of my favourite images.
I’d just got a hall pass from the job site and had done the Snapper to Kirra slog a handful of times wielding my camera with limited success. The day was getting on, I was tired, my lips were chapped and I was thinking more so about cracking a beer and what I was going to have for dinner than anything else.

It was however, a Gold Coast swell event. So regardless of the unruly wind and fading light I took a punt and drove along Pacific Parade towards Currumbin Alley on the journey home. To my surprise the sun came out and it completely glassed off, a far cry from the previous three days of the thirty-knot southerly winds Oma had produced.
Fielded with a new sense of enthusiasm, and a muesli bar I found on my dash I raced up to my favourite vantage point to find flawless conditions below. A solid 10 footer lands on the sand behind the rock and local surfer/ lifeguard Brett Levingston lines it up perfectly with his good mate Dan Small at the helm of their ski.

I’d never seen such perfection, and for a period of 40 minutes before dark it was as good as it gets anywhere.