Evolve: Sean Davey’s Transformational Moments

From much earlier in my career, probably mid '80s – '84, perhaps. They had a Gorilla Grip team event at Bronte and Tamarama beaches, and this was when teams were really heavy with name surfers. Mereweather was one of these with MR and Nick Wood, who was blowing up at the time. Also Simon Law and Matt Hoy representing. I knew that the pro's would be out early in the morning, getting their training in while the masses slept, so I got up early and swam with my old Nikoness II and Toshiba Flash. I was very much hunting an MR image. As a young surf photog', that would be the ultimate to get a sick water shot of MR at that time. Sure enough, he was approaching me and I just steeled my resolve to get the shot and held my position. Mark told me later that he was starting to feel the fins letting go and was worried that he was going to run me over, but that the shot was very cool. It almost ran as the cover of Waves magazine, but was pulled by the publisher at the last minute. This really was early, early days for me in the use of flash to capture surfing, but it was all fun to be continually experimenting with different techniques. It helped to form my resolve to shoot different. That's one of my motos. Photo: Sean Davey