Chapter 2
Shawn Pérez leaned into the monopod and stretched, dropping his shoulders while both hands clasped the camera housing and lens. Arching his back to relieve the tightness down his spine, he never took his right index finger off the shutter release. He was always ready to shoot, and although his head dipped between his arms to loosen his neck muscles, his eyes were still open, scanning the water and beach. He never thought about all the great images he had taken over the years. It was the photo opportunities he missed that tortured him.
Raised on the tough side of Rincón in Puerto Rico, he thought about the stone seawall where he sat in the sweltering heat, watching the gringos arrive to surf. With each year’s arrival of spring break, stateside families came to the western tip of the island drawn to some of the best waves in the Caribbean. Rental cars carried young surfers who emerged with tiny tri-fin rockets tucked under their arms. Dads and moms yanked classic longboards from atop the vehicles, all with pale white skin lathered with sunblock.
For a long moment, Shawn recalled these families, thinking about how each usually had a designated amateur photographer tasked to capture their group’s surf action. With pitifully inadequate cameras, they would attempt to photograph surfers queued up far from shore, snapping aimlessly at the ant-sized specks rolling up and over the incoming swells. Shawn knew better, and it pained him.
He remembered those early years. He would wait for professional photographers who timed their arrival with the waves, hoisted massive tripods strapped onto black hard-sided cases from their cars, lugged them across the sand and set up for long grueling hours in the tropical sun. They came alone or with pro surf teams and generally kept to themselves, assigned by surf magazines to chronicle major worldwide swells. These were the masters of high-speed, telephoto, sports photography. And with their professional, digital single-lens reflex cameras and enormous lenses, they could touch their subjects more than 500 to 1000 yards in the distance as if they were only a few yards away. Shawn was consumed with a thirst to know all about this new world of digital photography and the visiting photog’s were his professors, whether they wanted to be or not.
Shawn always knew he loved light since his first sneak to the beach with his abuelo’s ancient 35mm Minolta. The U.S. Navy had gifted the camera to his grandfather after a two year Combat Camera tour as Photographer’s Mate in Vietnam, a practice usually reserved for military snipers and their rifles, but with some exceptions occurring amongst other uniformed specialists. Before the sun had risen, he had slipped out from the cramped shack where three generations of the Pérez family lived and bolted shoeless to the beach, with neither film in the camera nor any idea of how it worked. Tucked away the entire morning in a secluded spot near Maria’s, a beach in Rincón famous for its giant left-breaking waves, he snapped away with a dreamlike pride and confidence. Phrichit, phrichit, phrichit. Shawn imagined the remarkable photos he took, albeit without film. Later, when a few pros spotted him nearby, being the bros that they were, they acknowledged him with a wink and a smile.
When his grandfather died, there was no question in the family who would get the old Minolta. Thomas kept it with him every day and quickly mastered all the tired classic had to offer. He barely covered his film and developing costs in the beginning, though he managed to earn enough to save up and buy a 200mm zoom lens which finally extended his reach out to the surfers’ take-off zone. But without a digital high-resolution camera body, his surf images looked washed out and grainy compared to the rich, detailed fullness of the advanced multi-million pixel images.
Then one afternoon, while shooting from his perch at Maria’s, Shawn saw two vans charge into the dusty parking spaces closest to the reef. At once the sliding doors of each van exploded, ejecting young surfers who stopped just long enough to strap the leashes attached to their boards onto their ankles before charging out into the surf.
Soon after, a few mothers followed, aligning beach chairs to the sun, numb to the commotion, settling down for a day of wine coolers and paperbacks. Finally, and lagging behind, were most often the “too cool for school” dads feigning indifference to the unforgiving crushing lefts crashing on the reef. On this particular day, one father made love to his nose rider, caressing the board’s top surface with Sexwax, more to delay his first paddle into the massive overhead sets, less for the purpose of stickiness.
Shawn’s eyes drifted from the fearful father to a final lingering passenger climbing out of the vehicle with two industrial black Pelican cases in hand, which he then placed precisely in the center of a large blanket, both as far from the sand as possible. Popping the lid on one, he efficiently mated two Canon DSLR cameras with telephoto lenses: one a 400mm f/2.8, which Shawn had seen before and recognized instantly as a favorite of the pros, the other a monster of over three-feet long with a camouflage exterior. His attention remained on the giant lens, one he had never seen in person, but had only read about in a Spanish-language photography magazine: a new introduction by Canon as the first ever 1200mm telephoto lens with an f/2.8 f-stop created for serious naturalists and bird photographers. This guy is special, Shawn thought. What, with all this gear!
After the man secured the 1200mm onto a hefty tripod, he moved beside it with the 400mm mounted on a monopod (similar to the one Shawn was now leaning on) and at once began to adjust the camera’s internal settings. As if the new lens wasn’t enough, what really blew Shawn away were the dozen or so remaining lenses nestled securely within each case. This man had every Canon professional lens currently available and then some; Shawn had never seen anything like it!
Shifting from his position, Shawn slowly edged up closer and smiled meekly at the guy. Speaking little English and figuring the American spoke even less Spanish, he continued to grin in an attempt to establish a line of communication without seeming like some kind of a Puerto Rican pervert until the man noticed Shawn with a brief glance. The guy then reached down for another big-ass camera to attach another big-ass lens, and then laid it directly into Shawn’s hands.
Shawn pulled back a bit. Who the hell would do this? Hand over something this expensive to a homeless looking punk knowing I could take off with his shit! But gear dude, as Shawn referred to him, must have picked up on the young Shawn’s positive vibes because he dedicated most of the morning to furthering Shawn’s photo education by pointing out to his eager student, via intuitive gestures, the valuable features and innovations of his collection.
Around midday, with Shawn in tow, they set up on a sandy point and for the rest of the afternoon stood side by side, sharing while comparing techniques. Shawn beamed when gear dude grasped one of his favorite skills — waiting for the exact moment the light provided by the setting sun from behind a wave formed a halo of light around a tubed surfer.
Gear dude was astounded by this and a number of other natural methods Shawn used. By the end of the afternoon, it dawned on Shawn what he lacked in technical knowledge and equipment, he made up for with his instinctive understanding of light and motion, with the two behaving as one. He seemed to see things others could not see or maybe chose not to see. He often questioned his ability to observe a bird in flight as though it were still. He would follow it with his eyes, noticing every distinct flap of its wings, its darting eyes, its tail adjusting with the wind. His mind’s eye was able to freeze the bird in mid-flight, then visually select the optimal moment when movement, color and light melded to create a beautiful moment in time. Shawn’s need to share these visions was the driving force behind his desire to photograph.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, the spent surfers wrapped up their afternoon session with one final “stoke” wave before reluctantly paddling back to the beach. As this remarkable day in Shawn’s life came to a close, he took special note of gear dude’s obsessive method of packing up his equipment. Once certain no sand contaminated the equipment cases and just before jumping into the back of the van, gear dude, his newfound mentor, handed Shawn a small card with h
is e-mail address. With some translation help from a nearby surfer, gear dude said to Shawn, “Mr. Pérez, sir, if you save up one thousand dollars, I’ll sell you this camera so you can begin the journey in life for which you are destined. You and I are now friends. Send me a message when you are ready.”
Shawn’s jaw dropped and he started to think of all the ways he could earn cash to speed the delivery of the camera.
Nine months later, when the Canon Mark II 1d arrived, it was the first time Shawn felt he had the tools he needed to bring his visions, not simply photographs, to the world of surfing.