Joe Curren Photography | Blog

Skip Frye amongst his quiver of longboards, holding an original Greenough spoon.

Earlier this summer I visited the master shaper and living surf legend at his shaping bay in San Diego. His quiver really is amazing. This is about half of his personal handcrafted fishes and longboards – he has another room this size filled up as well. Skip cherishes his boards, keeping them all very clean and organized. When I was with Skip in the Outer Hebrides a few years ago, I watched him clean all the wax off of his board after a surf, then polish it with at towel. He said he does this to all his boards, after every session.

Skip is such an inspiring guy, I don’t know anyone more humble. The following quote from a recent interview with Skip from the website Liquid Salt caught my eye. It’s such a contrast to the us Open which is underway this week in Huntington Beach. It reminded me why I was originally drawn to surfing other than to, let’s say, the nfl or nascar

“It’s get­ting more and more crowded out there every­day as the sport grows by leaps and bounds. We have to learn about the aloha spirit. One thing that goes against that is com­pet­i­tive surf­ing. It’s in the media fore­front so to a lot of peo­ple that are in the water – they act like it’s a heat.

I used to com­pete and in fact I have ben­e­fited from com­pet­ing in two dif­fer­ent eras. But I am not so much into that any­more. I don’t really attend any of the com­pet­i­tive for­mat things just because I just don’t like that aspect of surf­ing. I just like it when you go out with your friends and have fun and every­body is num­ber one. In the com­pet­i­tive for­mat, there’s only one per­son that really feels good about it.”

This is the link to the rest of the interview, which was posted a few days ago: Liquid Salt

Here’s another interesting quote regarding the creative process coming from one of my favorite photographers:

“I don’t know what’s important to the people who look at my photos. What’s important to me is to make them. I work all the time, but there are only a few of my photos that I find really good. I am not even sure that I am really a good photographer. I think that anyone working as I do could do the same. But my purpose is not to prove my talent. I photograph almost every day, except when it’s too cold for traveling the way I do – as in this time of winter. Sometimes my photos are OK, other times they are not, but I think that eventually something will come out of my work. I don’t worry about it.”

– photo and quote josef koudelka, via a photo student

Interesting quote from director Jim Jarmusch about encouraging people to steal ideas. Jarmusch made “Down By Law” and “Deadman”, two of my favorite films. The quote was taken from an interview on www.moviemaker.com. Not sure who made the graphic.

A few days before Christmas my brother and I did a big road trip through seven states to see family and to do some snowboarding. We started in Santa Barbara and drove north to the Oregon border, then all the way across Oregon and Idaho, skimmed Wyoming, then drove south through the entire state of Utah in a blizzard, blew through Nevada, then skimmed Arizona before finally arriving back at home. We saw a lot of pretty countryside. There wasn’t a lot of time for taking photos, but this sign in Central Oregon caught our eye.

Today is my brother’s birthday. He’s celebrating it in the air on the way to South Africa for an exhibition with Occy at J-Bay. I’ve been waiting for them to matchup at this venue for years. I hope Tom has a good board.

Amsterdam graffiti and photo courtesy of Alex Kopps.

J-Bay photo: Joe Curren