![]() I’ve just progressed from there over the years.īut surf photography really is very competitive, and it certainly wasn’t without many years of sleeping on couches and funding trips off my own back before I really started to see some returns on what I was doing.”įast forward a number of years and in 2018 and 19, Dunbar describes what were for him “a dream few years”. He gave me a shot and that contact was really the building block for where I am now. “My mum basically talked me into calling the media manager and telling him that I wanted to lend a hand. Not long after that there was a women’s’ World Tour surfing event here on the Northern Beaches,” he recalls. “Through school I did a TAFE course where I was able to learn Photoshop and get my technical skills together. Surfer professionals lived in the area at the time – including Kelly Slater – and several surfing magazines were also headquartered locally, meaning that before long, Dunbar had a use and a market for his photographs while he continued to build his skillset and consider the craft as a viable career path. 1/1000s f7.1, ISO 250.Īt the time, it was arguable that the Northern Beaches was at its peak of surfing fandom and growth. Canon 1D X Mark II, EF15mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens. It was a finalist in the 2019 Surf photographer of the Year awards. This is a very difficult shot to nail, and I haven’t pulled off many like this. I shot with a big dome port to allow the clear water in the wave to wrap around the port and see the duck dive beneath the surface. I started realizing how special and how beautiful the moments I was seeing out in the ocean were, so I really just started putting two and two together.” Taken at the Tahiti Pro Teahupo’o - WSL Championship Tour 2019, this duck-diving shot is one I have dreamt of for years. “Around the same time that I started getting into photography I discovered the beach as well, getting into surfing. ![]() ![]() Now, we both have careers in photography,” Dunbar recalls. “At every chance, my cousin and I would try to hijack his cameras and take them off to shoot. Matt Dunbar’s first forays into photography came around the same time as his discovery of the ocean, recounting that it was his grandfather’s collection of Canon SLRs that first prompted his fascination with documenting his surroundings. ![]() In the process, Dunbar is proving himself as a formidable visual storyteller with goals that reach well beyond the shoreline. ![]() In recent years, the Northern Beaches local has finally begun to reap the rewards of many years honing his craft photographing the surfers, surf culture, locations, and stories of the surfing community around his home.įurther proving his commitment to his subjects, he has jumped at several last-minute, get-yourself-on-a-plane-as-soon-as-possible sort of opportunities that have seen him jet-setting around the world, living the dream as a professional surf image-maker.īut all the while, Dunbar has maintained an ability for what set him apart in the first place: not enchanted by the glitz and glam of the corporate side of surfing, nor the first-class tickets to Tahiti – instead, he has remained focused on the art of storytelling and revealing the true struggles, issues, characters, triumphs, and failures of those lives spent among the most ferocious waves our planet can conjure. Canon 1D X Mark II, EF50mm f/1.4 USM lens. The image was part of a project ‘UNDONE’ which is a big wave surfing movie available on iTunes. This image of Laura Enever in this huge barrel became my first magazine cover. Among a sea of amateurs all vying for tripod real estate on the beach on a Saturday morning, few are afforded the respect of local champions like Laura Enever – something achieved only by a handful of photographers who through sheer time and consistency prove their commitment to telling the full story of surfing. With twenty-something world class surf beaches frequented by a collection of local world champions and big wave-riders, simply strolling down to your nearest break on a Saturday morning is half the battle in capturing magazine-worthy surf photographs.īut the trouble is that a lot of photographers already know this, and so do the surfers. If one were to choose a place on Earth to start a career as a professional surf photographer, Sydney’s Northern Beaches would surely be near to your first choice. ![]()
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