Folks, you ever wondered what the reef might look like at such extraordinary big wave locations such as Pipeline or Waimea. I’ve been fortunate enough to fly over the north shore a couple of times when there was little in the way of surf. As a result, the reef’s become very clear to the eye, from above. Take these 2 pictures of Pipeline and Waimea. Both quite clearly show massive slabs of reef, right where the wave zone is during big surf. So now, you know… :D

I’ve taken a bit of an interest in botanics lately and just the other day, I noticed
these cool plants near where I live and so I went back there yesterday and photographed a bunch of pretty cool images which I’ve added to my botanics collection. As with most of my images, these are also available as prints and canvas at just about any size, you can imagine. Also, there is a10% facebook discount happening right now. Just use the code: facemate when checking out here or here. :)

This is another of my images from yesterday morning’s glorious sunrise here in Hawaii. I was actually headed at the time for Lanikai, further to the south but as I rounded Kahana Bay, I could see that the sun
was almost rising already, so I scouted out a spot and waited for the first rays of light to hit the clouds above Kahana Ridge.
It’s a beautiful inspiring place here in Hawaii, when you take the time to stop and enjoy the scenery.
Enjoy a 10% discount upon checkout when you enter the code: facemate.
Sean

Kahana Sunrise

Hey folks, hope you’re all having a great 4th of July weekend, those of you in the U.S. Here’s a picture of the fireworks from Turtle Bay
last night with the infamous Pool Bar

4th of July fireworks at Turtle Bay, on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii.

Lane and I just spent the last couple of days over on the BIG island of Hawaii, relaxing and checking the place out a little. Lane grew up on the Big island, so she’s always stoked to go back there. She even got a couple of decent surfs in at Banyons while we were there. It’s a cool island with so many cool beaches and other rad stuff like the volcano. It was nice though to look out the window and see the shadow of the plane as we landed back home, here on Oahu. There’s nothing like home, no matter where you live, it’s always nice to come home .

Landing in Honolulu

One thing that we surf photographers have always prized pretty much higher than anything else is the cover shot, particularly one that’s done with a purely art driven purpose, as opposed to what most covers are these days, which are usually pictures that are not much more than logo shot for the big surf companies.

That is one thing that I just love about magazines like The Surfer’s Journal from the USA, The Surfers Path from the U.K and here; Alma Surf from Brazil. (Alma means Soul in Portugese)
I’ve been passionately photographing surf for a good 25 years and in that time, garnered more than a hundred magazine covers, seriously and these three magazines have always showcased good photography or art on their covers. It’s never ever been about logos. This is my latest cover with Alma Surf. I’m stoked on this cover. Pure art photography.

Alma Surf magazine Mar-Apr 2010 issue

My mate Dan over at the Grafik Museum, loves it when I throw a new batch of images at him. Check it out…

The Grafik Museum

I love finding pictures in all shapes, colors, tones and contrasts. This one seems to have captured a little bit of everything. The old rusting pick up truck with the surfboards hanging out the back, backdropped by a brilliant red twilight sky at Haleiwa beach park, on the north shore. Just perfect.

fins n' palms

From my underwater black and white series, this one is of a pod of Hawaii’an spinner dolphins

Pod of Hawaii'an spinner dolphins

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….

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

I’ve been doing some dabbling on the video feature with my new cameras, in between shoots. Here’s some cool stuff from Off The Wall, yesterday morning.

Enjoy

Sean

I grabbed a few more clips and threw ‘em together on iMovie. Nothing too fancy, but its entertaining…

Sean

Following on from the last post, this is some actual video that I filmed on the Canon 7D of the amazing river surfing, going on. Take a look and you’ll be amazed.

Aloha

Sean

As many of you know, I’ve been lucky enough to live here on the north shore for the past 12 or so years and during all this time, I’ve been really good mates with Pancho Sullivan and now his wife Hanauni and young family. Pancho and I have been on all kinds of trips to different places and I’ve shot literally thousands o fphotographs of him over the years. Pancho and his wife recently had their 3rd child Olivia Kehau Sullivan but unfortunately, poor little Kehau was born with heart complications and requires a series of operations to correct the condition and although Pancho did the smart thing and had health insurance, it still isn’t enough to cover such complex procedues. We are all doing or bit to help the cause. One thing that I am doing for the cause is this all time image from the recent huge swell on “Massive Monday” These are being described by many as the largest waves ever ridden at Waimea Bay. It’s a special image and it’s for a very special cause, so there will be a limited edition of just 100 prints. 50% of all proceeds will go straight to the Kehau Sullivan foundation.

Coming soon, I have a very, very special opportunity that will enjoyed by just 20 people. More about that in a future post. Thanks for reading and I hope you can donate to the cause. Print enquiries should be directed to fineart@seandavey.com

Massive Monday at the bay 2009

It was an amazing day of surfing at the Pipe Masters. Mick Fanning won his round three heat against young Hawaiian; Torrey Meister, keeping the dream alive, then the ball fell into Joel Parkinson’s court for his matchup against Hawaiian surfer Gavin Gillette. Joel pretty much had the heat till a couple of minutes to go when Gillette caught an amazing almost perfect wave. This left Joel needing a pretty decent catch up score score. A last minute set didn’t cooperate and Joel was sent over the falls, sealing Micks world title. Had Joel gone though and Mick lost in the very next heat against fellow Coolie kid; Dean Morrison, the title would have been Joel’s. It was that close. We all feel for Joel because he doesn’t have a title yet, but Mick is a deserving hard surfing sportsman too. well done Mick. Congratulations mate.

It’s been a couple of days of the Pipe Masters already, but everyone’s is in such a daze after the recent Giant swell episode that the appeal of the Pipe Masters is not as it usually would be. Given that it’s only 3-5 foot on average, doesn’t help with one’s enthusiasm that much. We are all like a bunch of over-fed relatives on thanksgiving afternoon. I checked it yesterday morning and flagged it because I’m snowed in at the office with catching up on photo “processing” Again I scoped it this morning and shot a heat or 2 from the Rockpile end of the beach, just to give a different look to it. Most of these are free surfers, but a few of them are heats in the Pipemasters. We are expecting a healthy rise to the size of the waves tomorrow, so I might have some excitement to report to you tomorrow, given that there is a world title race on the line at the moment as well. Stay tuned….

Aloha

Sean

Hi all, wow, what a few days, it has been. I slept over at the Rip Curl Off The Wall house the night before the contest because they said the roads would be closed down and I wanted to be right there, where it was all going down. The rumble of the ocean was just about the loudest, I’ve ever heard it. I was woken a couple of times by waves, hitting the house even. The surf that evening was just about the biggest I’ve ever seen surfed at Waimea. 30 foot close-out sets were coming through quite regularly. real scary looking to be out there, for sure.

On the morning of the Eddie, I had to park a mile away from Waimea even at 5am. All kinds of people walking around in the dark, looking like lost zombies. ha ha First light revealed waves that were a lot less in size than the forecast 25-35 feet. In fact for much of the morning, it struggled to meet the 20 foot minimum size requirement for the event. Come midday though and the big stuff was back on with regular 25 foot sets pretty much till the end of the event. Heaps of surfers were having ago at riding the wave right to the beach, a few of ‘em even trying to get barreled on the shore-break, like Bruce Irons so famously did back in 2004. Most folks believed that Kelly Slater had the deal sealed with 2 near perfect 95’s to the beach, but big wave expert Greg Long sneaked in at the last moment and grabbed the title with a perfect 100 point ride. It was an amazing day, much like an outdoor rock festival. Thousands of people everywhere and every time a surfer got a decent ride, the crowd roared like at a football stadium. It was amazing. A day to remember. I’m looking to make a selection of images available as prints, so watch this space in coming days for print offers.

Aloha

Sean

Hi all, I’m super slammed here with a backlog of photo “processing” to do from the past few epic days at Waimea Bay, so I won’t dwell here long, but to say that it’s been an amazing couple of days here. I shot crazy huge Waimea yesterday morning for a few hours. It was massive and ugly, but man, oh man, it musty be close to the largest bay ever ridden. 30 foot sets rolled through sporadically all day long. Traffic of course was a nightmare, so I rode my bike down for the evening check. There was a crazy set of 30 foot waves that closed the whole place out right as the sun was disappearing over the horizon. I haven’t processed that image yet, but I will show you in the future. I heard that a bunch of surfers had to be rescued by jet ski under pretty extreme conditions because it was so out of control by sunset. The Eddie ran today and big wave legend; Greg Long deservingly won the event, in quite epic conditions at a more manageable 20 to occasional 25 foot. I plan to post a gallery of images soon, but till then, I’ll leave you with an amazing panorama that I shot yesterday of a HUGE close out set at Waimea, yesterday. It’s interesting to note that people will talk about a single close out at the bay for years, yet this day had frequent close out sets, yeah, frequent, as in about…oh every hour or so, there’d be some crazy huge set of walls show up for to go bowling. This was one of them.

If you want to get a real feel for the size, make this window as large as possible before you click on the thumb image.

Sean.

Waimea CloseOut Panorama 12-08-09

We have a massive, massive swell filling in round the north shore right now. I have to get right back up there before they shut it all down, so you won’t be hearing from me again till tomorrow night. Till then, check this beast from Waimea Bay, this morning….

Unknown surfer at HUGE Waimea Bay today, 12.07.09