The Surfers Journal
Light / Dark
I was sitting with Dane Reynolds and Jamie O’Brien on a remote cobblestone beach, on an island somewhere off the coast of British Columbia. It had been a long day of travel. There were ferry rides and float-planes and interrogations at the border. Now we were impaling fish heads onto sticks, hoping to initiate a bald eagle attack. There was no ice on the island, and the beers were warm.
“So,” Jamie said, “is there a photographer on this trip?”
The unfortunate answer to his question, at least for the moment, was no. It was one of my first big assignments as an editor of Surfing magazine and my boss, Evan Slater, had assigned a photographer from Santa Cruz named Nate Lawrence to shoot it. But when we arrived in Vancouver, he wasn’t there. I called Evan.
“Nate got turned back at immigration,” he said. “He had a juvenile ding on his record for a ‘Minor in Possession of Alcohol’ from years ago. He’s been sent back to Seattle.”
“Well, who’s going to shoot this trip now?” I asked, fearing failure.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Evan said. “He’ll be there.”
I hadn’t met Nate before, but that was all the evidence I needed to diagnose him with a distinguishing trait found in a lot of the great surf photographers: He’s probably a little fucking crazy, I decided.
The sun was nearing the horizon and I was ready to drown myself in warm beer, when we heard the wheeze of an engine approaching. A float-plane skipped across the water like a side-armed rock and idled as close to shore as it could. It was Nate. There was no dock on this side of the island, so we looked for something he could float in on and offload his gear—except he was already out of the plane, pushing his Pelican cases to shore, wading into the ice-cold water, fully clothed, holding his travel bag above his head.
“Nice to meet you guys,” he said, dripping wet. “Have you seen the forecast?”
Yep, he’s fucking crazy, I thought.
Professional surf photography has a lot to do with being there. Showing up. Arriving where things are happening. Where the waves are good. And where the surfers are interesting. Nate has always had a knack for that. Even early on.
“I remember I showed up at this spot near the harbor,” recalls Santa Cruz kingpin Josh Mulcoy. “It was a cold morning at the crack of dawn, no one around. I ended up surfing alone for two hours, and was a bit shocked no one paddled out and there wasn’t a scene. Only later did I find out Nate was shooting from down the beach and got a shot that would run in Surfing. He was there the whole time.”
At that moment, in the early 2000s, Santa Cruz was definitely the place to be. “When I finished high school,” Nate says, “it seemed to be the peak of professional surfing in Santa Cruz. It’s crazy to think how many guys were sponsored and making a living off of surfing. It was great for my photography, too, because I had so many surfers to choose from.”
His first surf magazine cover was a barrel shot of Matt Rockhold for Surfer. Rockhold and Mulcoy were just a few of the many Santa Cruz surfers who would find their way in front of his lens, and benefit from the prominent magazine exposure of the era. “I really feel like without Nate, my surf career would have been so much less productive,” says Mulcoy.
But Nate knew his local town was only the beginning. “I was having a great time shooting in Santa Cruz,” he says, “but I quickly realized that I needed to photograph more than the town I grew up in.”
He went to Bali for two months after high school with his best friend, Frankie D’Andrea. The trip cemented the next phase of his life. Bali was on the brink of a surf renaissance itself, and Nate found himself falling deeply in love—not only with the place, but also with a woman, Sari, who would go on to become his wife and the mother of his two children.
“After watching him sit in the tube for two months, I knew he would raise his family in Bali,” says D’Andrea.
Nate hasn’t donned a fullsuit or paddled out in Santa Cruz since moving to Indonesia 15 years ago. “He was super motivated when he came here,” says Balinese pro Rizal Tanjung. “He was always keen to travel and shoot—which put a lot of the Indonesian guys in the international magazines, and that got a lot of them good sponsors and elevated their careers.”
Documenting two places at the height of their surfing peaks would be defining for any photographer, but what really drives Nate is travel. Not just waiting for something to happen, but putting himself where it’s going to happen.
From chasing typhoons in Japan, to sleeping on bed bug riddled cots on the ferry to remote Indo locales, to running around San Sebastián draining vodka limons with the Modern Collective—that’s where he shines. It allows him to capture those rare, intimate moments along the way. He participates in life alongside his subjects. His camera is a part of his person, not a clunky appendage he keeps in an oversized backpack. His style is subtle and unobtrusive. And the results are authentic and breathtaking. Even conversational.
There’s a photo of Tanjung in Indonesia that D’Andrea believes is a signature Nate Lawrence moment. “He’s always had a way of letting nature shine as much as the surfer. I will never forget that Rizal shot—the light, the color, the smell of nasi goreng, the mystery, the awe, the way it made you say, ‘Where is that wave!’ That’s a Nate Lawrence photo.”
Since I first met him in Canada, Nate has continued to be there. For me and with me. We’ve left magazines and started magazines. Fifteen years on the road. In offices. On skate ramps. In airports. In hotels. I’ve watched him sit deeper than anyone at Macaronis and make it. We’ve been drunk. In trouble. In danger. I once saw him jump out of his car in traffic to run into a liquor store to buy beer—and he doesn’t even drink beer.
He’s also shot some of my all-time favorite photos. He remains one of the best and most interesting people in surfing. He’s always shooting. Even when you think he’s not.
[Feature image: In Lawrence’s niche, the obvious approach while working with surfers who double as acrobats is to capture them in the air, but the unassuming.]
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