THE HIGH FIVE

“TORRENTIAL RAIN IN THE FORECAST AND A FLASH FLOOD WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR O’AHU…”

... my truck radio laughed at me. I was parked outside the Kodak film lab in Honolulu and it had been a very long day shooting at the Pipe Masters. It was touching nine o’clock and I had been charged with driving the film from all the SURFING magazine photographers into Honolulu to get processed. We were on a ridiculously tight deadline with just a few days to get our shots on a plane to California and the night drop box at the lab was full of water from a rather bad design and a poorly timed Kona low pressure. Ahhh, the good old hard old days.

I used to load my water housing and swim out with 36 shots. I’d use at least one shot test firing the thing before I hit the water. Each time I pressed the button it cost about $0.70, good shot or bad. (Sometimes by chance, my trigger would stick and twenty bucks would go by while I was banging on the thing.) So I’d swim outside and try and to be extra frugal, agonizing over every shot and knowing that after thirty five more I’d swim in. At Waimea, where the shorebreak is a beast, once you got out through it you really didn’t look forward to going in again, and it was hard on the nerves every time you pressed the button.

Another anxiety was drawn out over a week while we waited to see our results. Did I get that one turn in focus? Was that guy actually in the barrel or was it just a shampoo? Did I have the right exposure? God, did I have the right exposure?! Arrgghhh, where’s the fricking Kodak delivery truck?

Even by the time kiting came along, the film that the magazines needed us to use was so slow (not sensitive to light) that we were always on the edge of not having a fast enough shutter speed, or getting enough depth of field. The films also had very poor latitude for exposure error. If you guessed wrong by more than a third of an F-stop the shot was ruined, and there was no Photoshop to save you. If the slide wasn’t perfect, well, better luck next swell.

But let’s say luck was on your side and you got a gem. You had to immediately pack it up and send it off. FedEx comes, you say a little blessing for safe travels and sit by the phone until you get the call