Coastal Wall Art

Every photograph here was made within a few metres of the water, most of them before the sun cleared the horizon. That is the whole selection rule. If I was standing on wet rock or up to my knees in a pool when I pressed the shutter, it belongs on this page.

Coastal work gets flattened into a look, all pale blues and driftwood, and that has never been what this coast actually does. It goes copper at dawn in winter. It turns the colour of a bruise before a southerly. On the right February morning the water at Bronte is so clear you can count the tiles. What I am after is the particular morning, not the palette.

The three strands run together here. There are the beaches themselves, sand and surf and the people who turn up at six. There are the ocean pools, which are their own obsession and have their own page. And there are the waves, shot low and close, where the whole frame is moving water. Roughly a hundred and seventy works across the three.

If you already know the beach you want, the Northern Beaches pages run from Manly to Newport, and the eastern beaches sit under Bondi, Bronte and Coogee. Everything I have made is in the full collection.