about

PHOTOGRAPHY BEGINNINGS
I started surf photography shooting from the land in the Winter of 2005 so im still a mere novice in terms of experience and skills, but im learning all the time. After shooting for a few months i'd built up a few hundred shots but had grown tired of uploading my photos to other websites so i decided to start my own site: "thesurfgallery" was born in February 2006. At first i only had my own stuff to display, but since then i've added sections for local photographer Simon Deacon, local artist Stewart Holmes and local cinematographer Paul Horrell aswell as having Leandra Goncalves (Mrs Jon) display her work. Over the last couple years i've been constantly adding and removing stuff from the site, much to my own annoyance, and i'm sure i won't be able to help myself carrying on doing this in the future.

Recently after seeing local pro photographer Mike Meals watershots , in the Summer of 2007 I started shooting from the water, a completely different and very challenging (for me anyway) form of surf photography. Must mention Mike as he has been a constant font of photographic knowledge and support with kit, editing and techniques.

KIT
All my photos are shot using Nikon bodies and Nikon/Sigma lenses and i predominantly shoot at various breaks in Whitsand Bay Cornwall.

BODIES
I use Nikon D200 or Nikon D70s camera bodies.
LENSES
Sigma 300mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM
Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 EX DG HSM
Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO DG Macro
Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6G AF Nikkor
Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G AF-S IF ED DX
Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S DX
Sigma 2x EX DG converter
OTHER STUFF
Gath Helmet
Fantasea FD-70N Waterhousing
Fantasea Waterhousing Bag
Lowepro Mini Trekker Camera Bags
Sandisk Compact Flash Memory Cards
Manfrotto Monopods
DELL Laptop

SURFING BACKGROUND

I have been surfing mainly on a bodyboard since 1980 (when i was 5), occasionally very badly on my brothers longboards predominantly in Whitsand Bay. I have also surfed a great deal around Cornwall and Devon aswell as parts of Europe, Africa and Asia, but as with most surfers there is nothing quite like your home break, and Whitsand Bay is mine. I have surfed Whitsands in just about all conditions over the years, stormy head high winter swells with the freezing ice-cream headaches to ankle snapping summer wind chop. Despite Whitsands ever changing sand banks, the half mile paddle outs through mountains of white water when it gets big, how the surf chops up with just a breath of cross shore wind to dealing with the ever increasing influx of tourists and other "surfers" over the years, Whitsands is still my favourite place to surf and always will be.

The majority of my surf photos feature my brother and good friends who together have surfed at Whitsand Bay for the last twenty five years. We have generally been very spoilt over the years, usually surfing on our own without the crowds, but as we have been finding more and more recently "all good things must come to an end", as Whitsands becomes ever more popular and zooed. The peaks that were once surfed by only us seem to have an ever increasing amount of unfamiliar faces on them now. In our time we have seen lots of people come and go, lots of changes in equipment and hairstyles (curtains, bleached blond to name two, see below)





















and the unpredictable nature of how Whitsand Bay breaks. Whatever happened to the Frying Pan shorebreak, here one summer gone forever?

LAST WORDS
Anyway the whole point of this website is simply to show local surfers surfing at Whitsand Bay so if you like Whitsand Bay, hopefully you will like the site . . . to be honest i don't really care.


Cheers
Jon Symons WBP.
thesurfgallery