There is something very unsettling about packing, unpacking and repacking your camera gear at 2am on a November morning in Bristol. Perhaps because I’d never taken that much camera gear abroad before, or more likely because I was about to jump in two planes, a ferry and a car with three guys I didn’t know, to throw ourselves into the colder side of the North Sea.
This trip came about after I signed up for a surf photography workshop with world-renowned photographer Tim Nunn. Alas, through injury Tim couldn’t make it so it ended up with myself (taking snaps) Jamie Gatley, Nick Rees and Adam Parsons (in the snaps). Luckily it wasn’t long before we realised we shared common interests including facial hair, taxidermy and couscous...
Anyway, back to the story. We arrived at our accommodation - Unstad Arctic Surf 17 hours after leaving Bristol and we couldn’t have been more happy. We had our own awesome cabin with plenty of room (it slept 10) to spread out our gear and make ourselves at home.
Surfing in Unstad
Unstad has a SW through to NW facing beach break, and two rocky point breaks - one on the North and the other on the South side making Unstad the most consistent break in the Island chain that makes up Lofoten.
Surfing was first discovered here in the early 60’s. The Beach Boys were topping the charts, and the only outline of a surfboard they could find was the cover of the album ‘Surfin’ Safari.’ So naturally, Unstad locals made themselves surfboards using the outline found on the cover!
It wasn’t until the 90’s when local viking Kristian Breivak rediscovered the bay. At this time, there were only a few surfers in Norway and they were all located around the Stavanger area . Kristian moved to Stavanger but continued to tell people about the fantastic waves north of the Arctic Circle. He ended up gathering a small crew and heading up to see what all the fuss was about…. They scored, BIG time, and put Unstad back on the map.
The Adventure
After a good kip in the cabin we woke up to a strong SW swell direction. We headed down to the North side of the beach and the guys surfed the right hander while I photographed from the rocks above. It was a strong offshore wind gusting 30-40mph, creating powerful head-and-a-half monsters for a good 3 hours. They surfed alone in a bay the size of Croyde with just a seal and some cormorants for company.
I went for a swim in the crystal clear, deep blue water with my camera one day, bobbing around, surrounded by the shadows of mountains coming out of the water in biblical proportions and wildlife that I only thought existed in Jurassic Park. Taking pictures in such a beautiful environment while the guys slid towards me in states of euphoria was incredible. That landscape was nothing like any other place I’ve been before, and in that moment I definitely felt some kind of connection to a higher power.
We got out after a few hours, had some food then went back in at the South of the beach to surf the point. The wind was wild! I’ve never seen anything like it! The guys couldn’t see anything on take-off because of spray while I shot from the boot of the hire car, praying it didn’t roll! The highlight was when Mee-Mee, a French instructor at the surf camp, paddled out past the guys (who had enough rubber on to survive a Nuclear attack) on a foamy, no hood or gloves and completely cleaned up!
After a few good days in the bay, we decided to go for a hike. I say hike, but we soon found ourselves traversing a small mountain. I’ll be honest here, we’re not mountaineers in the slightest. Our mountain walking gets as far as wearing North Face and sometimes going to climbing walls. Nine kilometers and 1000ft later we made it… apart from not being able to get a latte at the summit, I was chuffed! Though we didn’t have the time or energy left for a surf when we eventually made it back down…
Later that evening a friend from Bristol rocked up to our lodge (as you do, passing by the Arctic sea) and joined us for dinner. We had our minds blown catching a glimmer of the Northern Lights.
When it came to our last day, Mee-Mee took us to Kvalvika where the surf film ‘North Of The Sun‘ was shot. We hiked in, surfed, had a bonfire, hiked out, saw more Northern Lights, before arriving back at the surf lodge where the camp owner and local shredder Tommy had prepared a traditional Norwegian hot-tub. The perfect ending to an incredible trip.
Potential spots in the running: Tahiti, the Gold Coast, Hawaii, Indo and Scotland. As you can imagine, it didn’t take us long to come to an agreement… with great wifi, palm trees, organic houmous on tap, tropical waters and boardshort-surfs… it had to be Scotland.
Planning surf trips in Northern Europe can be a gamble at the best of times. You’ll be looking at going Autumn/Winter where you have a higher chance of scoring, but it’s going to be COLD. You can book it in advance, taking advantage of cheap flights that cost less than a meal deal, and reserve the nicest accommodation for your budget, OR wait, wait until the last minute, refreshing your forecast app every second, and when it's on, leave your desk/partner/baby/operating table, stick everything on a MasterCard and go! Leaving alllllllll that worry behind you. But even then the wave gods might have other plans...!
So we flew up to Inverness and picked up our van, which would be our home for the next week. A couple of the guys had already scoped out some good breaks while on a stag do, so with a rough idea of where the waves were hiding, we set a course North, leaving behind the metropolis that is Inverness.
I think what strikes me most about Scotland is how diverse the natural topography is. One minute you're driving over what I can only imagine the surface of the Moon to be like, the next Mordor, followed by Canada’s British Columbia. The striking, vast, and uninhabited views makes you feel like you're the first person to ever drive along that A-road, forgetting you're on an island smaller than the US state of Michigan with 68 million other people, Scotland feels deserted!
2 hours and 20 minutes later we rocked up at our destination (I say destination, we would have fallen off the top of the UK if we’d carried on). From our viewpoint we looked over a mile long beach, beautifully empty with a small ankle-biting wave breaking into a river estuary below. Some of us were keen on getting in there whilst the others wanted to try the other side of the beach hoping for something a little bigger. matter what the surf reports are saying, anyone who pays to travel to pursue a hobby dictated by mother nature, will throw themselves into the sea no matter how big the waves are. This time though, I didn't bother going in after watching Nick and Dale splashing around in waves smaller than toddlers' bath time, and waited for the others to return from their mission to the West side of the beach.
They scored, and scored big. I couldn’t see them from my side of the beach so I thought as much as they hadn’t returned for a while and when they did, I could see the smiles from about 100 metres away! I’m not going to go into too much detail about this wave only to say that we remained there for our entire week - why fix something that isn’t broken right? It delivered every day, no matter what those pesky surf reports said, which was probably a blessing in disguise. If it had been accurate there would be more rubbered-up people in the water faster than you can say “mines a Buckfast!” We had a powerful 5-6 ft left that ran you straight into the beach, then a conveyor belt rip next to the rocks on the left that took you straight back out. Perfect.
Shooting wise I could cover all angles, in the water, from the beach and the rocks. Point breaks, and waves close to accessible cliffs and rocks made shooting surf from shore that much closer to the action. In places like this one, you can get really close to the water and find yourself chatting to a surfer sitting parallel to you in the line up.. It always feels a little strange to me BUT opens up some great view points and potential to get creative with the angles!
Away from the action, our days were filled with chats, walks and wild swimming (well, more of a get naked, run in, and run out again) meeting wild horses, and having dinner under the stars lit by campfire. We all have an idea of how we spend our holidays right… This one definitely ticked all my boxes.
Our last day was the icing on the cake. We travelled down the coast to Thurso, an iconic right hand reef break. The surf scene in Thurso says a lot about the town. This world-famous natural resource is a stone’s throw from the town centre, yet it’s so understated locally that much of the community doesn’t bat an eyelid at the waters off Thurso East. What’s more, it seems that most people throughout Scotland have never heard of Thurso, yet surfers travel here from all over the world to experience the town’s fabled surf. And the beaches and reefs of Caithness may be just far enough away from the cities to keep it a hidden gem. That’s sort of Thurso and Caithness in a nutshell – a bit out of the way, but utterly worth the effort if you know where to look and what to do when you get here.
The prime surf season in Thurso is between October and April, when waves are consistent, and unfortunately also when the cold water is made even colder by an icy stream flowing down the River Thurso from the Flow Country. To your face, they’ll say you’re brave for getting in there, but behind your back, the large non-surfing contingent in Thurso speculate that you must have gone mad; the sport that originated in the tropical waters of Hawaii hasn’t caught on with everyone up here.
Thurso folklore tells that a visitor to Thurso Castle was the first to take to the waves here back in the 1960s. For decades, traveling surfers were a novelty – they’d compare boards with interested Thursonians and tell stories of surfing warmer waters in then seemingly unreachable places. But thanks to a combination of modern wetsuit technology, publicity and google maps, the cold-water surf at this quiet northerly tip of Scotland has never been more accessible.
A lot of breaks have this thing where you might not be able to see endless swell lines on the horizon, but instead, they just jack up out of nowhere. Thurso is definitely one of these breaks, so don’t get too worried if you wake up to bleak looking conditions. Waves like this form as a result of the incoming surge meeting a sharp, shoveled incline of the seabed which means the water is pushed up at an increased rate and angle. Here are some examples I shot from the beach while watching the boys getting freight-trained through 6-8ft barrel after barrel…
The energy of my mates and the natural environment of that trip kept me buzzing for days after getting back to Bristol, and we’ll certainly be back soon.
Cheers Scotland.
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Print Sizes
We currently offer prints in three different sizes, chosen especially for you to make framing your prints as easy as possible. Please note that all photos are printed with a white border to allow for a mount or frame to be added.
If you would like to order any of our prints in different sizes, or with different sized borders, please drop us an email and we’ll sort it out for you.
A - A4
Our smallest size comes in at 8.3" x 11.7" (210 x 297 mm). We print this size with a 0.5" border so the image area will be 7.3" x 10.7".
B - A3
Our next size up measures 11.7" x 16.5" (297 x 420 mm) including a 1" border, meaning the image area will be 9.7" x 14.5".
C - A2
Our largest print measures 16.5" x 23.4" (420 x 594 mm) including a 1" border, meaning the image area will be 14.5" x 21.4".
Paper Types
Giclée printing on 308gsm Hahnemühle Photorag Paper
Favoured by galleries, professional artists and photographers worldwide, giclée printing is a fine art digital printing method that uses specialist archival pigment inks and acid-free papers to create gallery-quality prints with excellent depth of colour, longevity and stability.
The super matt finish of Hahnemüle Photorag makes this paper one of the most popular papers amongst artists, illustrators & photographers alike. The paper gives muted blacks with even colour reproduction, and excellent detail. The surface has minimal texture with a chalky smooth cotton feel which creates smooth colour gradients. It has a delicate surface, so we recommend extra care when handling. Photorag is suitable for mounting but its cotton texture means edges can fray if not carefully handled.
C Type print on 231gsm Fuji Matt paper
C-Type printing is a digital process where a printing machine exposes light-sensitive photographic paper to produce a true photographic print from a digital file. I use Fuji Crystal archive paper with a semi-matt finish. This is a great versatile paper that maintains natural colours very well, creating a detailed and beautiful photographic reproduction.
Hope that was useful. Please get in touch if you need any further info. Click here to view our print shop.
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