Yeah Legends at Surf Visuals. Hope you guys are doing well in this crazy time.
My name is Guy Williment I’m a 27-year-old photographer from Avalon Beach, Sydney.
The whole photography thing came to me pretty late if I’m honest. I was 23 when I had just finished my University Degree studying Media & Communications at UTS and I had no idea what I wanted to do after studying. But the one thing I did know was that I didn’t want to jump straight into a full time job where I was going to be stuck in an office all day.
So like most people do when they finish School or Uni, I started doing laboring work, saved up my pennies and booked a ticket overseas ~ A solo trip to North America and Canada for 3 months to do a bunch of outdoor adventuring and the old cliché saying of ‘soul searching’. My sister lent me her Canon 7D for the trip and after that I was completely hooked.
I have always been an outdoor person and had a huge appreciation for nature but having a way to capture it during that trip really sparked something in me. I guess because I was travelling solo it allowed me to share my experiences and stories with people through social media & friends back home which I really enjoyed.
When I got home, a few people had messaged me asking for some prints of photos that I’d shot on the trip. It was the first time I’d ever made money off doing something I really loved.
So I set myself a 2-year goal to see if I could turn this passion of mine into my full time income and job. I started doing a heap of online photography courses, learning about lighting, camera settings, how to get commercial work and anything else I needed to know to start this journey. I was shooting a heap of stuff around home trying to build my portfolio which was mostly built around surf, outdoor & adventure lifestyle stuff.
Eventually I started doing a bunch of assisting with a mate who was a film maker which gave me a bit of an inside with people in the production industry and I started making some connections there. I was lucky enough to fall into a few jobs with NSW Tourism and some bigger companies which kind of kicked everything off for me and I’ve been lucky to have kept it rolling since.
I feel very lucky I can make an income through commercial photography work but the biggest kick I get out of taking photos is definitely just shooting for myself or working on my own passion projects. The latest one being a project we did called ‘A Corner of the Earth’ which came out at the end of last year.
Myself, Film maker, Spencer Frost and Surfer, Fraser Dovell did a surf trip up towards the Arctic Circle in the middle of winter on a search for waves. It was definitely the craziest trip but best trip I’ve ever been a part of. Shooting and Surfing in 1C (Celsius) water with the air temp somewhere around -5C / -15C, surrounded by snow and giant mountains. You are working with about 4-5 hours of daylight up in the North that time of year so you’ve got to be ready to strike when everything falls into place, it doesn’t happen much, but when it does, you can capture some pure magic.
Along with the film that Spencer produced, I made my first hardcover book from the trip which was a pretty crazy experience. I’ve never put so much time and effort into anything in my life. It was a rollercoaster ride producing my own book but just last week I sold out of the 500 books I got made which I was pretty blown away by.
With the whole Covid thing happening at the moment and work almost completely stopping for me, it has been a really nice time to just slow down, reflect and appreciate living where I do. I’ve been shooting heaps around home and recently just got my hands on a Jet ski, so we’ve been playing around with that a lot.
Other than that we have started planning our next big project which I’m pretty damn excited about, bit I guess we’ll just have to wait and see when the boarders open up again. Until then, I’ll be making the most of the beautiful Australian Winter we have ahead of us with a few snow missions and lots of swell chasing.
ntfCAKVvgQxo
McQBUknvxH
CpVYmQuWMbnTJjsH
Phantastic work