Hello by Martin Dorey and you are watching AdoramaTV. Welcome to this, the
third in my series about extreme photography. Today I'm here on the beach
in Bude in North Cornwall, UK to meet Clive Simm. Now he's a pro photographer
and a surfing photographer with more than 20 years under his belt, of shooting the
beaches and surfers around North Cornwall in the UK. It looks nice today, but I
tell you it isn't California here. In the winter it can get really brutal so I'm
going to talk to Clive about how he gets the shots he does and the kind of
hardships that he has to endure to get some of his lovely moments, including
the odd personal injury. OK, hi Clive, how are you doing?
I'm good, thank you.
OK, first of all tell me about that shot with Nathan because it's clearly taken on quite a serious day when
there's a lot of stuff going on and it must have been quite difficult.
Well that shot of Nathan, the day was ridiculously stormy. You can see by the waves is in the background
and the waves smashing off the cliff face, it was crazy. It was showery. It was windy. It
was horrible and I can't believe we went in the water. The location for that shot is North Cornwall. I can't
say where because it's a secret spot and the local surfers would get upset with me if I told you, but it's an
awfully long walk from where I park the car to get there, over very, very rough terrain.
As I say, the weather was horrendous. My kit is weather proof but I'm not. It was freezing cold, it was the
middle of the winter. To get that particular angle, I had to get almost level with the sea
and you've got those big waves coming in
so you've got to watch out what' s going on there. You've got salty spray all over everything and I
was on the beach for probably about four hours to get that shot. Probably took about
six or seven hundred photos to get that one so it's quite an effort.
Six or seven hundred photos to get one shot? And of course it could have all...you
could have ended up with nothing but I guess that's the risk you take isn't it?
Every time you go. Everytime you go surf photography. You've got to have the right surfer
on the right wave, you know, with the right conditions, basically.
Now, tell me about...because Nathan calls you, doesn't he,
to tell you he's off on a surf session. Tell me about how that works.
Well, there's quite a few local surfers that I, obviously I've been doing this along time, that I know quite
well and they all give me a shout, saying are you about? I'm going surfing here, there, or whatever. If you're a
decent surfer and you're looking for sponsorship, the sponsors want good quality photographs. Without
those, they won't even look at you. So the guys are switched on, get in touch, say I'm going here,
the conditions are great and I go along and take them and sell the photos to sponsors.
So, you're going out, there is no guarantee you're going to sell those shots but you're going
out with this relationship with these surfers in the hope that something is going to happen. Tell me
about the kind of personal injuries that you've had getting shots.
So you've heard about that. It was a similar day to Nathan's shot.
It's the same place actually, sorry. I had a call from an inflatable surfboard manufacturer
saying can you take a photograph, some shots of one of our guys? I said, yeah, no problem. I go down
there. The sun is shining. I walk along this beach it's always very rocky, similar to what we've got here
today but bigger boulders. I step on one, it moves, the rock tilts, my foot slips off it.
Crack. I look down at the sole of my foot, I'm thinking 'not too clever' I ended up having two surfers,
one under each arm taking an hour and three quarters to get off the beach to
get to hospital with a broken ankle.
Did you get a shot?
I got a couple but what's really, really funny, the Monday morning they launched a new surfboard, a different
color. So the shots were useless anyway but that's just all part of the fun.
You had some magazine covers. Tell me about what you had to go through to get those.
With the magazines, it's basically having the best shot they get submitted on the on the month, the one that
fits any advertising they've got in the magazine. I've not had loads but I've had a few.
I've had, Pitpilot, was a few years back and Wavelength, as well. I've won
competitions for surf photos. Magicseaweed run a best of British summer photo and I won with that one.
In terms of the extreme conditions that you have to go through, I mean, you know, does
your kit suffer for that?
Yeah you could say that. The air is very salty. These things are supposed to be
weather proof. The stainless steel screws on that lens are rusting, you know, it's
just exposed all the time to the salty air. My tripod is less than a year old, it's
corroding already. It's carbon fiber and magnesium, and the magnesium is corroding on
it and it's just, that's it. It's a cost that you've got to bear.
So it's just one of the things about going out in these extreme conditions.
Yeah, absolutely.
OK tell me about going out and shooting from boats.
Going out and shooting from boats is a whole different kettle of fish. I have what I
call a marine bag, which my camera, this big lens won't fit into it but I'll put it into a bag and I go out on a jet ski
normally and I shoot some pretty extreme waves from the back of the jet ski. It's exciting, but it's
difficult and it's dangerous and it could be very expensive if I dropped anything overboard.
OK, so everything is enclosed in a wet bag but it doesn't necessarily float?
I've tried it and it doesn't float so it's strapped to me quite tightly.
And you're strapped to the jet ski?
No, you sit on the jet ski and you hang on
to the jet ski.We worked on it in the past. There's two jet skis. One to tow the surfer into these extreme
waves and I'm driving the other one, driving the ski and trying to get the
photographs at the same time which isn't easy with a heavy camera strapped to you.
But you also need to put yourself in that extreme position right underneath the wave, don't you?
Extreme positions, the first time I went to this particular wave I'm thinking of. I was in
a little RIB that one of the extreme surfers had bought off Ebay. Tiny, little Seagull engine on the
back of it, 'put put put' job. Breaks down about 50 yards away from this quite
serious wave and there's a rip basically pulling me around back towards the wave. So I wave to the guys,
you know, the boat was broken basically. They were saying, aw you'll be alright. You know, if you get too
close we'll come and get you and it's just like 'yeah'. You know this sort of thing happens
as we say, you put yourself in the line of fire, if you like, to get the shot. I did get the shot that
day but I might not have done in that same position.
And that's the shot of the beautiful sun glinting
through the back of that wave? So that, I mean that wave, that shot looks beautiful. I mean it's clearly violent but
then there's obviously a whole thing going on behind the lens which is really interesting.
I mean things that go on behind the lens. You start by, obviously you've got to
plan the trip because you've got two jet skis involved. You've got to actually get
to the dock to launch the things. You've got to have all your kit ready. Everything has got to
be absolutely spot-on because if you get out there and your bag messes up because you didn't warm it
before you put your camera in it, it's a waste of a trip and it costs a small fortune, so
everything's got to be prepared. Everything has got to be absolutely spot on, otherwise you can be
wasting yours and the other guy's time.
Tell me about the kind of worst experiences you've ever had getting the shot.
Well the worst experiences tends to be when the weather is bad, when
I'm freezing cold, so cold that I can't talk, because my jaw muscles don't work. My gloves have
got wet and then they're frozen. I can't feel my feet. I get back to the car and I can't actually press the
button on the key fob to get into the car. That's pretty nasty to be honest. But you know, again, it happens.
It's North Cornwall. You don't get perfect Californian sun every day do you?
No and I would say that's probably quite extreme.
Yeah, that is extreme.
Thanks for joining me on AdoramaTV today. Next time we'll be looking into Clive's kit bag
and talking about that that big lens that he uses to capture some of those
amazing shots. In the meantime don't forget to go to the Adorama Learning Center for
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