Shark Island Camera Board Project

In 1997 I shot this photo with a Canon 5D SLR camera and a 15mm f2.8 Fisheye lens. The camera was mounted inside a waterhousing with a remote trigger that was made from a servo steering motor for a model car. The whole setup weighed 5 kilo and was mounted to the front of the surfboard.. The board was ridden by Dave "Speg" McKinley at Shark Island, Cronulla. I was standing on Cronulla Point with a remote transmitter to fire the shot. This was well before the GoPro was a real thing.

It took two attempts to get the shot out at Shark Island. On the first attempt the swell was bigger, and Dave got a couple of spectacular Barrels. I was so excited until Dave came out of water and as he walked up to me I said, “you got some big barrels I can’t wait to get the film processed” however the first words out of Dave just flattened me when he said, “the housing is full of water”. Oh Shit! How did that happen. When I checked the housing I realised why. I had not tightened one of the screws on the port and therefore it had not sealed properly. The camera was trashed but fortunately the lens was OK and the saltwater had destroyed the film. Luckily I had a backup camera and the following weekend we got the shot shown here. The swell was smaller but the light was better with a slightly stronger offshore wind that was holding up the barrels a bit better than the week before.

The image here won first prize in the professional division of the 1997 Canon Asia/Pacific Photographic awards. The theme for that year's awards was "Go for it". A similar shot from the same role of film also ran on the front cover of the 1998 Tracks Magazine's Photo Annual magazine with a 5 page article in the magazine detailing how the waterhousing, remote unit and camera board were made.

Jim Lucas at Force 9 Surfboards helped me custom make the water housing and supplied the surfboard that Stuart Paterson, who was shaping at Force at that time, custom made specifically balanced to be able to carry the 5 kilos of camera gear bolted to the front of the board that Speg was to ride. At the time Speg was the "King of Shark Island" so if any surfer was going to be able to pull this off it was Speg.