Matt Blakers sees the seasons through a photographer‘s lens and each season has a unique signature that it scribes across the sea.
Spring is playful, even flirtatious, and writes with a light hand. The waves are smaller with a soft and inviting luminescence.
Summer, by contrast, writes with a pen packed full of colour, casting hues from a palette of blues and golds. The falling lips of the waves are lighter, the sunsets are brighter and the water is warmer.
With autumn comes light winds and clean waves that break at the crest when fully formed before rolling over on themselves and travelling smoothly to the shore.
In winter the waves are raw, dramatic and chaotic and Matt says the big lumpy swells often produce rogue waves that mean he has to be ready to hold his breath and dive deep.
Born and raised in Manjimup, a land-locked town in WA, Matt’s affinity with the ocean came from childhood holidays to the coast.
“Our beach holidays were incredibly special. I just loved being out in the waves,” Matt says. “I was given a video camera when I was a teenager – you know, the old style type with those little cassette tapes – and I’d film us all mucking around at the beach.
“When digital cameras came out I started exploring the artistic elements of photography. I was instantly hooked.”
Matt now lives right on the coast in WA’s Great Southern region but travels all over Australian’s western and eastern coastlines to capture his shots.
On the day of a shoot he’ll be up at 3am, packing his gear then heading to the day’s location in his well-travelled ute. He’s aiming to be in the water, ready to shoot, in time for the Golden Hour; that time just before sunrise because when the first sun rays emerge above the horizon, their fingers of light cast sublime colours on the water and across the morning sky.
“When I’m shooting, I’m constantly moving in the water to catch the light at just the right angle. I’m out there for hours, taking thousands of pictures but usually only one or two capture the result I want.”
And that ‘result’ can be soft graduated colours with dreamy effects using a slow shutter speed or shooting fast to freeze water spray in mid air. It can also be waves that look like molten gold or ones that are black and brooding like oil.
But it’s big waves that excite Matt the most and they don’t get much bigger than those at ‘The Right’. Located off a remote part of WA’s south coast, the waves here break a kilometre off shore so it’s only accessible by jetski. ‘The Right’ is a bombora (Bombie, for short) that can reach more than six metres tall and has the reputation for producing some of the ‘heaviest’ waves in the world.
Thick, deep, wide and high, these gravity-defying waves carry the weight of literally hundreds of tonnes of water. And when these bombies break they can break you too.
Matt speaks calmly about the dangerous aspect of what he does.
“It’s about being really fit and learning where to position yourself in the water. I know how to free-dive and know not to panic as panicking leads you to lose your breath. I’ve had my share of wipeouts as you can never be totally sure what a wave will do. I wear fins and a full wetsuit but no life jacket so that I can dive deep below a breaking wave and I can go down 20 metres with the camera’s waterproof housing.”
Like any photographer, Matt feels the buzz of anticipation whenever he plugs his camera into his laptop after a shoot.
“You never know exactly what you’ve captured until it flashes up on the screen. Sometimes you get nothing worthwhile and times when a perfect image appears unexpectedly.”
But regardless of the results Matt hopes his images inspire people to respect and protect our vital oceans.
Only then can we really call ourselves ocean-lovers and only then can we truly worship the waves.
