Surftime Magazine

A familiar figure on any beach at any time is photographer Antonio Vargas. He remains a tireless chronicler of surfing in Bali and quite often finds himself turning his lens to the surfing of the younger generation. Hardly a local contest can pass without “Tono” on the beach, pacing back and forth with his tripod and camera, looking for the best angles as heat after heat unfolds. One day Canggu, the next Halfway and then the next Uluwatu. Active and always positive. And yet his motivation is so simple. Certainly not monetary, Tono shoots for the love of it. The love of surfing, of our island and of its surfers, both young and old. As this portfolio will attest, we are lucky to have him.

Surf photography is not a sport. And yet it is only the results that count. Photographer Damea Dorsey knows this one inside out. As far as he is concerned, if his photographs aren’t good enough, he’s not close enough. But when he says this he not talking about being physically close, but emotionally close to the subject matter. His is a style that reflects a depth of emotion, not just a depth of field. Like most photographers, his is a world that trusts photographs far above words. And when he finds the circumstantial light that he seeks, he brings something into existence that did not exist before. In this portfolio, Damea’s goal was to show what it feels like to observe consequential surfing from a swimmers perspective. Not a paddlers perspective, but the perspective of being up to your chin the the medium that makes the surfing possible. A committed, immersive experience. Informed with inspiration, not information. It is the difference between looking at a picture for a minute...

A surf photograph, above all, must explain the the humanity of the moment. Using a machine to capture a moment in the ocean reveals how rich reality is. We take surf shots to understand what our lives mean. A great surf shot is not made in the camera, but on either side of it. It’s one thing to take a picture of what a wave looks like, it’s another thing altogether to show what a wave is. The raw materials of surf photography are light and time, life seeking light, life seeking time, one hundredth of a second at a time. A surf photographer is the instrument that teaches surfers how to see without a camera. Surf photography is life lit up. It has so little to do with a camera. The camera just sits there in the hands of a master. The surf photographs are there, you need only take them. A surf photo is the stillness of a chaos. The real equipment surf photography takes is simply a pair of eyes. A surf shot is a breath held forever. Surf Photography is a disclosure of art. Dreami...

THE MEDITATIONS OF RACHEL TALIBART

You can see just about everything you need to see from the beach announcers booth at the Corona Bali Protected event at Keramas. You can see a doctor hovering over a very dry looking Caroline Marks. She is laid out on a small couch back behind the media booth with a small towel covering her chest. The needle of an IV bag full of saline solution is stuck into the inside of her right arm. She looks overheated but she cannot sweat. The first signs of heat exhaustion. Even the yellow jersey cannot keep you safe from an attack of travelers diarrhea. Still a novice traveler, she had over done it with the sun and the local food and she was just dizzy as hell. It would cost her that yellow jersey, paddling out weakened and lackluster. But still game, she promised to take it easy on the Nasi Goreng. She also told Stephanie Gilmore that Steph would have to give the jersey back after the upcoming Margaret River Pro. And you can see that miracle happening. You can also see Kelly Slater in ...

To express beyond word, into the quiet, into the lonely quiet of inside or above. To see what we are not meant to see. The bird’s eye or the third eye. They call it art but it is not art. It is thought. Organic. Crystalline. Interpretive. Loving. Do birds think in three dimensions? Up, down, sideways? Without help we can only go sideways. Humans cannot go up or down. Only in thought. These new tools, these camera’s that fly, are they any different than the brushes that have flown over canvases and in caves for eternity? To open not a door but a hole, a void, in order to fill it with thought. Thought, that King of all existence. Too find that quiet thought. That profound silence and aloneness. To not look but to see. Are our cave paintings and our photography since the beginning nothing more than art simply radiated as emotions? How far does it go? Must one create an image to feel it? Understand it? Is there a joy in loneliness? You slip beneath the waters and all becomes muffle...