The first time I met Dane Peterson, he ignored me. It wasn’t his fault, but it was an awkward moment none the less. After gaining my bearings in the Crescent head car park I shuffled towards his car with my camera in hand. He was shorter that I imagined, especially for someone who has made a career out of riding boards almost double his height. As I got closer I raised my arm for a handshake, he approached me, but brushed straight past. Apparently a first handshake can reveal a lot about someone, however I wasn’t sure weather to scrutinise his morals and personality based on our first encounter.
Once I realised he was rushing to the car parks edge hooting Nathan Oldfield - a filmmaker Dane is working with - along a small wave I figured he deserved a second introduction. Dane, Brett Caller, Nathan Oldfield and myself spent the next three days at the east coast longboarding haven surfing, relaxing and spending equally as much time cashing in our savings at the bakery.
During that time I noticed Dane’s approach to his photography and surfing was cool, calm and collected and looked as if it required little effort. However, having shot 7 magazine covers, being featured on more than a dozen, and a surfing career spanning over a decade requires lots of dedication, knowledge and experience. I was interested in the choices and decisions Dane had made that has shaped his career thus far and had a chat to him after our trip.
You moved to Australia from California when you were relatively young. That’s a pretty big move, was that a pretty tough decision for you at the time?
I was 19 when I first started coming to Australia and over the next couple years I was going back and forth between America and Australia as much as possible. I was doing 3-month stays and started extending them until I was spending half the year here. At that age in America I was fed up with the place and burning out on the fast paced lifestyle of Los Angeles and how over populated it was becoming. Especially with how everyone was so consumed with the almighty dollar and how hard you had to work to just scrape by and survive.
Then I started coming to Australia and fell in love with the waves, obviously because I was so keen on surfing. I just sunk into the lifestyle a bit because I was spending so much time here. It was then I met my now ex-wife. We did the back and forth thing for a couple a years and the one-day I thought ”Geez, if I ever had the chance of living here one day I’m going to do it”. So we were heaps in love and just said “screw it” then I went though the whole process of applying for a permanent residency. I had to jump though a shit load of hoops and circles to do so, but fortunately I was approved and have been a permanent resident here since 2002.
Was it a decision you ever regretted?
I don’t regret it in anyway, I love Australia and I have been here long enough now that this has become home to me. It’s funny to say that cause I’m obviously an American, I was born and raised there. But I think the fact that I’ve lived here for the majority of my “adult years” takes the edge off it. I travel back to the states from time to time, and its kind of a spin out…It’s fun to go back and reconnect with my family and mates, but its really hard to do more than a 3 month stint without thinking “Ok, what I am doing, am I going to bury my toes and try and hang here. Or am I going to go back to Oz”, and I always end up thinking, “Oh, I have got to go back to Oz.”
I always tell myself that the ideal life would be to spend the months of February through August in Australia. Then September through October in Indonesia. Followed by November to February in California.
Sort of like the Endless Winter?
Well, I never thought of it like that. And I honestly really dislike cold climates but that just seems to be when the surf’s always best. (Laughs). But come to think of it, I would then kind of miss out on Malibu, where I grew up surfing and I really love. So maybe I’d change it to have a couple of months in between Australia and Indo… hahahaha, in the perfect world that is… which we obviously don’t live in.
In terms of a prefect world I thought surfing and taking photos for a living is pretty sweet!
Oh man, for sure! I’m extremely fortunate to be in a position where I’m able to earn a living through the things I’m most passionate about in life.
As a distinguished surfer and photographer, do you find yourself having trouble prioritising between the two because both are your profession.
I don’t think that I put one before the other. And I guess for the most part I don’t choose, it kinda chooses me. On any given day depending what’s going on I just go the direction I’m feeling. In the last 12 months or so I have been pretty busy and shooting a lot, so there has been stints there I have needed to get back into the water and take a break. But it goes back and forth. In the last 2 months I have been surfing and really focusing on nailing down god segments for a few video projects, and I haven’t been shooting as many stills as I would of liked to have. In this case, I’m kind of kicking myself in the ass cause I missed out on a few opportunities to shoot some unique and interesting thing’s that I would have loved to have captured. So sometimes it can be a bit of a tricky juggle, but for the most part I don’t have any problems with it.
It’s also kinda fun to be able to bounce back and forth between the two as well. There are some days where I will do both. I’ll start shooting in the morning when the lights decent, then I’ll go for a wave, or a couple, and save a bit of energy to capture the late afternoon light as that’s my favorite time to shoot. But really, and not to sound harsh, there aren’t a lot of people here that I’m really that keen to shoot. If I am hanging out with people I enjoy shooting, I definitely tend to steer more towards shooting stills as opposed to surfing. But everyday you wake up and feel different, and I just play it by ear. But I wouldn’t say that I choose one over the other at any time, its more 50/50.
In a digital age of photography you are still shooting a lot of film for personal and commercial projects, why is that?
When I’m shooting film I enjoy my creative process a lot more because I’m basically just trying to fuck it up. For example, I’ll chuck rolls of film in the microwave for a few seconds, or I’ll open the back of my camera, and I do a lot of push/pull, and cross processing techniques. It’s awesome to be able to make or break something that has permanence. Film has this, where digital doesn’t. So for me, that’s enjoyable as I’m having fun shooting cool subjects and then tweaking something that’s going to be burnt in and permanently engrained. And yes there’s people out there who will probably write me off and say “you can do all that stuff with digital”, and they are right to a point. But for me, digital imagery will never come out with the same look and feel as film as it just doesn’t have and provoke as much depth or emotion in the image. That is unless your willing to spend valuable time behind a monitor re-processing an image that you didn’t truly produce, when you could be out there shooting.
In the perfect world though, film trumps digital?
If I had unlimited funds, I’d probably shoot film 80-90% of the time. Digital is still fun though don’t get me wrong. For instance last night I was shooting a mate in his shed playing guitar and I was getting super weird results trying different techniques in which you could see and show the results first hand. So in that sense, digital is fun because it doesn’t cost anything and there is still a creative outlet there. I definitely prefer film. And depending on what my bank account looks like, unfortunately that generally dictates what format I’ll be shooting.
I guess there is an experimental element to digital too, without the financial burden that film has.
Oh yeah man, I just came back with 6 rolls and I was like “shit that’s 300 bucks right there.” (Laughs)
There are a million different boards for a million different waves out there now days. You seem to have a really diverse quiver, but you would make a conscious decision to ride certain boards more than others. What kind of crafts do you prefer and why?
I’d say I’m pretty open minded, in a sense that I’m not going to have only one style of board. I have a lot of boards in my quiver, and I generally just let the surf dictate what I’ll be riding on any given day. With the long boarding side of things I definitely prefer your more traditional, heavier weighted single fin logs. I feel they fit into my repertoire and the style of surfing that I enjoy doing as well as portraying my personality. I’m not personally a fan of the high performance long board that you generally see in the lineup today. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a board “similar” to that in my quiver but I never find myself getting on it as a lot of the time I’d rather just get on a shorter board than get on a board of that style and try to force a nine footer to do turns that you can’t really do.
With short boards it’s the same. I don’t generally ride your standard tri fin, it’s not that I can’t, it’s just that I don’t find they are as much fun. Id much prefer to get on something that’s a bit wider, shorter, squirtier, and has a bit more volume that I can paddle. At the end of the day we’re all out there to have fun and enjoy ourselves, and whenever I get on the “standard/modern equipment” I just find that afterwards, I have a bit of a frown on my face. So in that sense I tend to steer clear of those types of crafts, but I don’t limit myself to any one. I always have 5 or 6 different boards in the car when I go on a surf trip and let the waves dictate what I am going to ride on any given day.
You’ve got to have something to ride in all conditions. I am a firm believer in the fact that no matter where you live on this planet, if you’re a surfer, you have to have a quiver. You have to have what the surf calls for.
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