Surfing in San Diego, 1965-1966

Kind of amazing these photos survived all these years, and admittedly, some of 'em are pretty raggedy by now. I was 16-18 years old at the time and these were printed on an old Federal Enlarger that I bought at the thrift store and set up in a tiny little closet...I taught myself how to develop and print in black & white, and wasn't all that worried about quality, or longevity; I was just stoked on surfing and wanted to make photographs. Most of them are in a panoramic format because at the time, I did not want to waste precious photo paper by printing anything other than the wave, so they look much better at the largest size, and I've included a link on most of them to make it easy. This was prior to the advent of RC paper, so these photos were all printed on fibre base, and just swished around in the bathroom sink for the final wash. Amazingly, none of the photos have fixer stains, and it's been over 40 years now...I guess the lesson there is that I really didn't need that $400 archival print washer that I bought sometime in the 1980's. In '65-'66, the short board had not yet been invented, so this is longboarding in its prime...wetuits were almost never worn in the summer, and surf leashes did not exist. Aside from the shots taken from the water with a Nikonos II, all these photos were shot with a Nikon F and a cheap soligor 450mm telephoto lens that I bought at Fedco.

24 photos | 1,492 views

items are from between 24 Aug 2006 & 31 Jan 2008.