Surf Photography

On my mind

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:58:04 +0000

Well folks, usually I’m on my way to Australia right about this time of the year and usually, I end up at this very special little island in Bass Strait. I’ve been going there for many years, Seems that if I make it there this year, it’ll be a little later than usual, due to commitments here in the islands.

Surf Heaven

Surfboard Porn

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:34:23 +0000

My long time friend Kye Fitzgerald, son of the Great Terry Fitzgerald is a really, really good single fin surfer like his dad and he visited over the past couple of weeks. Under his arm, he had the most amazing quiver of single fin surfboards that you could imagine. Take a look at these few shots and tell me, that you don’t want these beautiful Terry Fitzgerald single fins. The man is a master surfboard craftsman.

Aloha Jam – Kehau Sullivan Benefit, a great time for all.

admin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 23:10:53 +0000

Last night’s Aloha Jam, for the benefit of Kehau Sullivan was a great time had by all. Pancho’s whole family came along to enjoy and were so well received by everybody. There sure was a lot of Aloha in the house last night. I only took a little “point and shoot” camera with me which frankly struggled to do the job, but here are some moments from the evening. Thank you everybody who came along or/and gave to the cause. The Sullivan’s are very honored by the level of support, shown to their family and they actually hope to continue the good work by setting a foundation in the future, to help other families in similar situations with their children.

Aloha

Sean

Big Music Jam TONIGHT, Mar 5th for Kehau Sullivan at the Hard Rock Cafe, Honolulu

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:00:51 +0000

One of Hawaii’s favourite surfing sons; Pancho Sullivan has a beautiful family of 3 kids with his wife Haunani, however their youngest daughter Kehau was born with a heart defect and requires a series of expensive open heart surgeries. Although Pancho is a very responsible family guy and has what he thought was bullet-proof insurance, It’s still going to cost them over 150K beyond what the insurance covers. Once we all heard about it, a trust fund was set up in Kehau’s name and it’s been pretty much growing from there.
Our good friend Joni Lee James from Tasmania is a bit of philanthropist and pretty much took the bull by the horns to make this music fundraiser happen. Joni was actually in a car accident on Maui last year while visiting the islands and formed a deep bond with the islands and their people while she was recovering in hospital. Through her efforts in just a couple of short weeks, we are looking at one of the best ever line-ups of Hawaiian musicians under one roof at one time. Rumour has it that there might be a band reunion or two as well. This is shaping up to be one mighty good show, so folks, let your friends know to come on down to the Hard Rock cafe in Honolulu from 4-10pm on friday the 5th of March. There will also be a silent auction of surfboards, art and some very unique collectables. Also, there will be an art showing from Jay Alders and Sean Davey More details can be found at Kehau’s website.

Sean

Aloha Jam Fri 5th of March 2010

Mural March. Chance to save big on big prints.

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:15:42 +0000

O.K. folks. It’s Mural March and that means all Mural prints with a ticket price of more than $600 have a huge 20% pre shipping discount applied to them. There is no limit on how many, but the offer does run out at the end of this month, so if you’ve been thinking about sprucing up that one room with a massive tropical mural, this is the absolute best time to get yourself a deal. Right now. Just log onto surfphotosart.com, select your prints and apply the coupon code: BigWall when prompted for a discount code. You will then have a 20% discount deducted from the order before shipping is applied.

Mural prints rock!

Epic short lived Pipe Session.

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:51:44 +0000

Well folks, it sure has been a weird old week here on the north shore. It started out with the tsunami threat which most folks took quite seriously indeed. Ever since that day, it’s been howling trade winds at varying degrees of knots between 20 and 50. Pretty much victory at sea conditions, for the most part. I did however grab this cool late session at Pipe on HD 70 frames per second, that came together about an hour before the sun set, a few days back. There’s been very few real days at Pipe this year. This was just a sample at little more than an hour’s worth of surfing squeezed down into just a few minutes. Enjoy.

Late Pipe sesh’

Late afternoon Pipe feb 26th 2010

Epic Sunset Beach a few days ago

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:03:21 +0000

I was surprised to stumble upon pretty good quality surf at Sunset a few days ago. It’s taken me till now to get a clip together. Enjoy!

Aloha

Sean

Epic Sunset Beach

Classic Sunset - Feb 26th 2010

Hawaii’s Tsunami threat now over

admin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 07:17:41 +0000

Just about all of you know about the Chilian earthquakewhich occured last night and the resulting tsunami threat which had
all of Hawaii on full alert till well into the afternoon. I started the day out being woken by about a dozen tourists packing all their stuff into their cars out in the parking lot from 2.00 – 5.00am yeah, took ‘em 3 hours to finally piss off. Following that was the
air raid sirens every hour, starting at 6am. We made our way down to the gas station at Sunset beach only to find that they’d closed it right on down. Then back on the road down to Foodland where they were letting people in, but only so many at a time. That only lasted an hour before they shut it down. The most popular items that filtered out of there were bottled water and toilet paper. We got a bunch of both ourselves. The other things that were moving out the door at a pretty brisk pace were large bags of ice and beer.
I spoke to my neighbor Josh
who pilots the helicopter out of Turtle Bay
and he told me that he was probably taking it up to avoid any possible damage from tsnunami’s and he invited me to join him. It was my intention to fly over Rocky Point on the north shore
and document the difference between the surge and the wave, over some of these reefs. So we continued to watch the progress in Hilo and it just didn’t really pan out in the end. So, it was all a bit of a no-show, but really, we are all very thankful too.

Sean

Here are some glimpses from my day here on the north shore….

Uh Oh, looks like a legitimate Tsunami coming for Hawaii

admin — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:52:53 +0000

We woke very early this morning to tourists scrambling to get their stuff packed into cars and out of here. A massive earthquake in Chili last night was called a Super-Quake. Apparently they only happen in the world like 0.3 times a year, which is one every 3 years in the entire world. This one was apparently 5 times more powerful than the one that hit Haiti. We hit foodland at 6am to get a bunch of water and stuff, just in case and it was packed! Heaps of crew were there already. Reports are starting to filter in about a 6 foot tsunami hitting French Polynesia and other islands out there.. That’s all I have for now, we;ll see how things pan out. Take care all you guys that are near the water. It should be arriving here in Hawaii around 11.30 am. I’ll report back tonight with an update.

Foodland north shore, early this morning

Kye Fitz’ shows his single fin flair on the north shore

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:57:21 +0000

Kye Fitzgerald
is the son of Aussie 70’s legend Sean Davey
Terry Fitzgerald, also known as the Sultan of speed back in the day. Terry was widely respected for his surfing at places like Sunset where speed is an advantage. Like his dad, Kye is also an avid single fin surfer and also has a penchant for big Sunset. He just happens to be visiting at the moment and has brought under his wing a young Sydney lad whom I currently know simply as Max. Like Kye, Max really likes riding the single fins and his style shows, especially for such a young lad. There is so much more style involved in making a single fin perform. Take a look at this picture from today’s session at (frankly) pretty horrible, semi – onshore Rockys. But man, look how hard he’s driving that single fin It does have these tiny little one inch finlets, one on either side and I believe that it is the finlet on the other side of the board which is currently holding him in place. The single fin itself is out of the water.

Kye Fitzgerald digging deep and holding on with just a winglet at Rocky Point

Surf/skate legend Jay Adams

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:40:45 +0000

I’ve been doing a bit of filming on and off lately . I was shooting some stuff at Off The Wall yesterday morning when I saw skate legend; Jay Adams get this tasty little wave

tasty little wave on which he showed some cool body language. Check it out here!

Jay Adams at Off The wall Feb 24th 2010

Picture of the day; Pipe Turtle

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:34:41 +0000

This was the very first ever picture that I made of a turtle. I was swimming at Pipeline one day and noticed this turtle cruising by and so I dove down and squeezed off just one fabulous frame of fujichrome Velvia. This is still one of my favorite Turtle images, despite that fact that I have produced many, many more over the years. Like with many of my images folks, you can order a print or canvas just by clicking here. Enjoy.

Aloha

Sean

Pipe Turtle

Bodysurfing with Keith Malloy.

admin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:07:20 +0000

As many of you know, I’ve been spending a fair bit of time, swimming on the Pupukea sandbars lately and photographing the amazing conditions. I was out there yesterday and met up my old buddy Keith Malloy, who was out enjoying the perfect bodysurfing conditions. Keith of course is a great surfer who not long ago was mixing it on the world tour. These days, he’s happy to just enjoy the ocean in any way he chooses. Today, it was all about bodysurfing and Keith is pretty dang good at this too. He even placed 6th in the Pipe Bodysurfing event a couple of years back, when it was held at sizey Pipe. Keith has expressed a desire to travel with me to my homeland of Tasmania, so you never know what I might get up to in the next couple of months. After all, it is about that time of the year when I like to head down there for a bit of a look around…

Early Gold

admin — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:29:30 +0000

Another of my portraits, this one more of an environmental portrait in the truest sense really. My friend James Romero, out for an early surf with the rising sun, last year at Monster Mush, in the middle of summer. I just like the cruisy relaxed vibe that this picture gives off.

Sean

Early Gold on the north shore

Poker Eyes

admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 08:49:17 +0000

I’ve been preparing a bunch of images these past few days to enter into the now very prestigious
RedBull illume. I know that the competition is going to be very, very intense this year, to win this event, so I’m not by any means, getting my hopes up. Just simply entering what I have and see
what comes out the other side. :) This portrait here of Jamie Obrien is one of my entries.

Jamie Obrien - poker face

I’ll feature more in coming posts

“Waimea Power” nets another double

admin — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:01:59 +0000

As many of you know, it’s been an amazing season here for really big surf. One of my favourite images from the recent big swell episodes was one such image that I captured late in the day before the Eddie ran. This picture of several surfers just scraping over a huge set wave at Waimea just seemed to so well capture the absurd danger of the situation at the time. Shortly after this image was captured, several of these surfers had to be rescued, when things got a bit out of hand.
This image also happens to be the very same image that I’m currently promoting, in response to the call out for donations for the friends of kehau Sullivan fund.

This is a limited edition print. You can order any size from 12 x 16 inches and up in either paper or canvas, but there will only be 100 prints in total. You can view a complete list of pricing here, but because this is a limited edition, all orders must be placed via email to: fineart@seandavey.com Furthermore, 50% of all proceeds of sales from this print will go to The friends of Kehau Sullivan fund.

North shore sand bars light up again for 2 day marathon

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 06:17:51 +0000

It seems that the picture which I posted yesterday morning, entitled; AquaBlade was a bit of a omen, but in a good sense. That is exactly how the sandbars at Pupukea have been looking for the past 2 days, here on the north shore. The water has been absolutely crystal clear translucence, dreamy blues and greens of majestic natural beauty. I’ve swum collectively about 8 or 9 hours in the last 2 days and it was so much fun. It sure didn’t feel like work really. The waves were just so
clean and green. It felt like I was photographing pure ocean energy. The best thing too was that there was only a handful of surfers on each bank, so the vibe was real mellow and everyone had an awesome time. These are truly the best days on the north shore. :)

PIcture of the day: AquaBlade

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:26:52 +0000

Aquablade

Today, I’m featuring one of my current top selling images. This particular image has yielded 2 recent print orders as well as a print sale through my agent WaveRiders gallery
gallery recently.
Around this time of the year, when the swells get a little smaller and more organised, the sand bars between pipeline and Rocky Point become epic spitting barrels. This image was taken on one such ultra clean day at Pupukea sandbar.

Like many of my images, this picture can be ordered directly on line as a print or a canvas in sizes up to 30 x 40 inches at SurfPhotosArt.com website

For larger print sizes, send an email to mural@seandavey.com

Finals day at the Volcom Pipe pro

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:06:27 +0000

They wrapped up the Volcom pipeline Pro surfing contest yesterday at perfectly glassy/a> 4-6 foot Pipeline. It was the earliest that anyone can ever remember seeing a contest at Pipeline finish. There were just the 2 semi finals and final. The final itself was kind of hard to pick for most of the way because everyone was getting pretty decent rides. I never saw the scoring, but it must have been pretty close. There really wasn’t any doubt about Jamie OBrien being the winner though. Everybody seemed to know that before the final even ended actually. Aussie journeymen; Anthony Walsh and Mark Mathews both finished 2nd and 3rd respectively while Danny Fuller from Kauai rounded out the top 4. It was a beautiful glassy day, so you know that all the Pipe regulars were stoked to get their break back so early in the day. :)

Sean

SUP to da max! until it got too big anyway

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 06:39:10 +0000

The SUP crew ( Stand Up Paddle surfers ) held a contest at Sunset Beach a few days ago and it was pretty border line on weather anyone really should have been out there. A very large west swell pushed the take off zone well over to Kammies which made for some interesting rides not to mention some pretty gnarly cleanups of the surfers who were paddling out. Think of the way a bowling ball knocks down pins and you’ll get a fairly accurate idea of what it looked like when the huge west sets rolled through and cleaned the place up. A couple of riders came close to drowning in the heavy conditions and it was eventually called off. Here are some images from the couple of heats that I photographed.