Joe Curren Photography | Blog

I spent part of March and most of April in the Southern Hemisphere. Rode some waves and shared good times with good people. Covered a lot of ground….drove 3000 kms in a week.

I will post a few photos here as they gradually become digitized. Will also add new galleries to my site soon…

Plein air painter Jeremy Harper and vista from Rincon Hill.

Santa Barbara is having a really poor winter for surf, the worst I’ve ever seen. But the weather has been nice so last week (sorry, film) I went up onto the ridge and took some shots with my pano camera. It was so clear you could see most of the Channel Islands perfectly-Santa Barbara, Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel and Santa Catalina as well as San Nicolas (which is rarely seen from the mainland) (San Clemente was hidden behind Catalina).

At the end of September, I took my second trip to the coast of Newfoundland in Atlantic Canada. I first went there in 2003 where I spent most of the time holed up in a moldy hotel room while it rained for days on end. I almost pulled the plug on that first trip and went home early, but photographer Rob Gilley was patiently tracking a hurricane forecasted to head our way and talked me into extending my ticket. We ended up surfing a perfect right point break that was as long as Rincon. We had it all to ourselves and the sun even came out.

This time we explored some never before surfed coastline along Newfoundland’s northern peninsulas. Here you can get north swells, so the surf is more consistent than in the south where you depend on fickle hurricanes swells. I was with Rob Gilley again for this trip, along with P.V.’s Chris Del Moro and Alex Gray. We rode some newly discovered reefs. One break we found gave you a short but sweet 3-second tube. It was fun, but you had to kick out right after your barrel or you would smash into a giant boulder. While we didn’t get the sought after long right point break on this trip, the scenery was beautiful and we had sun for most of the trip. A highlight was Saint Mary’s Bird Refuge, where you can get very close to thousands of sea birds.