October 25th 2022: Team Backdoor

The Backdoor surf team is one of New Zealand's biggest and brightest surf teams. It has stars like pro surfers Paige Hareb and Billy Stairmand on it. Backdoor is a weave of surf shops spread throughout the country with one of the largest collections of boards and core surf equipment of any store.

Personally, I love that they support so many Kiwi surfers and plough money that people spend with them here back into their team or into our internationally competing New Zealand athletes. Backdoor even goes out of its way to feature New Zealand surfers in their ads, billboards and displays. That may not sound like such a big deal but it captures something special for New Zealand's surf community and, in my mind, completes the circle.

So to shoot for them this past week was a real privilege. I wanted to put them in the best waves we could find. The forecast looked dreamy. And so we found ourselves at dawn on the first day peering out to sea at Aramoana looking for the arrival of a much-celebrated north east swell that had lit up the North Island's east coast.

The ocean was flat apart from the remains of a soft two-foot wind swell. Hardly photo-worthy conditions even with the talented crew we had waiting alongside me: Billy Stairmand, Jay Piper-Healion, Paul Moretti, Caleb Cutmore, Taylor Hutchison and Darren Celliers.

We waited and waited. No swell. Coffee. Lunch. No pre-cursor sets of note. A lot of doubt about its arrival. Then at 2pm ... bang! The swell fills in as dreamed. Like a switch had been flicked. Then double bang ... the wind swings onshore and turns what we'd hoped to be a super exciting surf into a frantic disorganised mess.

It was an emotionally draining opening day, which thankfully didn't set the scene for the rest of the trip. Full story coming soon over on NZ Surf Journal.

You can check out Backdoor right here.

See you at the beach ... Derek

PS If you haven't already done so then jump on to NZ Geo and vote for my finalist image at this year's 2022 Photographer of the Year awards. My image is the drone shot of surfer Caleb Cutmore from a Catlins trip earlier this year. You have until end of play Wednesday. Link here.