This is the mesmerising Sunshine Coast photo that could create an ocean of change.
Acclaimed Noosa photographer Paul Smith’s stunning picture of a curling wave at Sunshine Beach has been chosen to promote a powerful Eric Bana-narrated documentary.
Envoy: Shark Cull, from director Andre Borell, is about to be released and aims to change the way people think about controversial shark control methods.
Smith told sunshinecoastnews.com.au he was thrilled his brooding photo, titled “Flume”, was being showcased to publicise the 90-minute documentary, which also features surfing legend Layne Beachley.
Bana (pictured) – whose credits range from The Castle and Troy to Steven Spielberg’s Munich and true crime series Dirty John – will narrate the big-screen release that pulls no punches against the long-established state government-operated shark control program introduced to prevent attacks on swimmers and surfers.
Seven-times world title-holder Beachley is joined on-camera by other big names, including Australia’s first surfing millionaire Tom Carroll and American conservationist, freedriver and model Ocean Ramsey.
Ramsay co-founded the One Ocean Organisation and One Ocean Diving – an immersive conservation program and supportive research platform – with Juan Oliphant, and gained international media attention for freediving around the world with 47 species of sharks, including great whites.
Screenings and Q&A sessions for Envoy: Shark Cull are expected to be held in Noosa and Maroochydore.
Educating people about the thousands of ocean creatures annually that become the unintentional victims of the shark program is something close to gallery owner and photographer Smith’s heart.
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“It’s really nice to have one of my images for a cause that I really believe in,” Smith said of the offer that came out of the blue.
“It’s really good that people understand what’s actually going on.
“The whole program is outdated and needs to be looked at.
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“There’s whales, dolphins, turtles and everything else being killed at the same time. So, it’s quite amazing it’s still happening.
“A lot of the shark areas are so overfished. Because of this, a lot of the reef sharks are taken away from the whole area.
“Then it’s just natural that other predators move in and when they do move in, they’re a little bit more aggressive.”
His moody black-and-white image, itself, may look familiar to many Sunshine Coast readers. “Flume” featured on the cover of the Winter 2019 edition of our glossy sister publication Salt Magazine, and on the front of Smith’s own 2019 calendar.
It also took out second place in the 2020 Nikon Surf Photo of The Year – part of the Surfing Australia Awards.
Smith said the photo was taken about two years ago in familiar territory.
“I was right up in the corner of Sunshine Beach – just on the point of the rocks there,” he said.
“Sometimes I’ll jump in the water or I’ll just stay on the rocks – whatever suits the photo. That was in between the rocks.
“I had in my head what I wanted, but it just takes a while to get sometimes.
“It’s pretty much how it turned out, actually.
“I just wanted that perfect wave. Lots of space around it. An offshore wind.
“The lighting was perfect: just a little bit of light hitting the spray.”
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The photo was part of about a dozen similar dark, thought-provoking snaps taken over about a year that Smith created for a special exhibition at his Sunshine Beach Road gallery.
The moodier shots can be much more appealing creatively but also require an enormous amount of planning and effort.
“Flume” (coined by the winner of a naming competition Smith held on social media) took months to capture correctly.
“I was after that shot for such a long time,” said former Sydneysider Smith, who moved to the area to be close to family 20 years ago, following a 10-year stint based in Switzerland as a skier and snowboarder.
“I had my spot worked out. I had everything worked out.
“All the elements have to line up, otherwise it just makes for an average photo again.
“I stay up studying the weather patterns. I’m obsessed with it.
“It’s so nice after all that time trying to get it that I finally got everything lined up. It was just perfect.
“It just means going down first thing in the morning, so it’s nice and dark but I still get that first little bit of light.
“(On the day) I don’t have that much time, because when it starts getting lighter, the whole thing changes.
“You probably get a good half-an-hour or so to try and really nail that shot or then by that time, the sun’s right up.
“So, it’s not actually on the day, it’s more the whole year trying to get it.
“I do the same with a lot of my photos. I try to get a picture in my head of what I’m after and then I’ll just try and shoot for that for however long it takes me to get it.”
Smith, who counts Qantas, Tourism Australia, Virgin Airlines and Rip Curl among his larger commercial clients, is grateful for the collaboration with Borell to use “Flume” to promote the documentary, even if he isn’t quite sure how that came about.
It’s one of the mysteries he’ll get to the bottom of when he next expects to see him at the Noosa screening.
In the meantime, he’s hoping more people will want to have “a piece of Hollywood” and buy a print of “Flume” (the prints sell for $49 to $2200, available at the gallery).
“I’ve sold a few of that one. I think it’s so different from anything else hanging around anywhere in any other gallery,” Smith said.
“There’s a few of them that go together really well, too – the dark and moodier ones.
“I love storms. I love when it’s really cloudy.
“There are some beautiful shots when it’s clear and sunny. But then they seem to be like the same as every other shot, so I try to change it up a little bit.
“Clouds are just as important as the actual waves for me.
“It creates a bit of emotion as well.”
The mostly landscape photographer’s next big challenge is to take on the human landscape.
And it will be quite different from the portrait and live music work he’s done of subjects including Pearl Jam, PiNK, Coldplay and Bob Dylan for Rolling Stone magazine.
“They’ll be nude shots, black and whites but not ‘the obvious’,” Smith said.
“More like ‘Flume’ but in body shape.
“Parts of the body. Shape and form, like a human landscape is what I’m after.
“The lighting I want is really black-and-white, moody shots again.
“It will probably take me a few more months to get it together.
“It’s something different. I need to keep mixing it up all the time, otherwise you really lose what you’re doing.
“You lose that creative part of it which is why you start in the first place.”
