The Grizzled Photographic Old Man of the Sea.

Through a swirling cloud of cigarette smoke I watch the Grizzled Old Man of the Sea talk. He has light freckles on his forehead and nose, but the rest of his face is obscured by a curly blonde beard. As he talks I can make out the lightly tobacco stained teeth in his mouth move up and down in front of a healthy red tongue. His eyes, however aren’t the eyes of an old man, they are the excited eyes of a 27 year old artist. They are the eyes of Ryan Heywood.

“I love shooting houses, music, people are epic to shoot, I love shooting people.” He says to me passionately. Taken out of context this would have frightened me, especially coming from a bearded man sitting in a dimly lit room filled with smoke, but he is talking about photography. Ryan isn’t actually a sailor, he’s a photographer, a photographer who has an uncanny knack of capturing people unposed and in the moment, he is somehow able to click right as his subjects are at their most real. If you look around his studio the walls are pasted with his pictures, one of a demon-child is on the right, and there is a rabbit-man holding a four pack of bourbon on the opposite side. These pictures aren’t doing much for my state of unease, but I like them nonetheless. Just above Ryan’s bed in the corner, the paint is peeling away from the walls. The red has flaked away to expose a shape similar to two old men talking, Ryan has taken a pencil and drawn the faces of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon, the grumpy old men, on the stucco plaster exposed by the peel back. That pretty much sums up Heywood’s perception. He sees things that regular people don’t. He has an eye for angles, levels and detail that escape the normal human being.

I ask Ryan about a photograph that caught my interest on his website, when researching before the interview. The picture shows a black lady, with her breasts out, waving at someone behind the camera. Heywood starts giggling. “That was the most amazing, one of my favourite moments I’ve ever had taking a photo. I’m really stoked you asked me this. I was using a Mamiya RB67 , which if you know what that camera looks like it’s really big and it’s heavy and it’s clunky, with a big lens and a big hood and a big back, it’s a pretty heavy camera to handle and hold. So anyway we shot the start of the roll and we stopped at Oceanside, which I thought was quite nice but everyone tells me that it’s a bit gritty. So I was taking a picture of a Wiener schnitzel sign because we don’t have Wiener schnitzel in Australia. Anyway this black woman comes out of nowhere, and she’s got wiener schnitzel too, she’s just bought some as well and some chilli fries right, with the alfoil peeling over and she walks up, I’m standing on a brick wall with my two mates down next to me and she walk’s past and goes ‘Hey! Hey! Check this out! Look at this! Take a photo of this!’ and she whips out her tit and goes ding ding ding ding, with her finger and taps her breast up a little. My friend Gallen almost spat out his chilli dog, and Floss is crouching over, hitting his knees. So I’m taking a photo of her and she’s just standing there, and the first shot I got of her was just her looking into the camera with the cheesiest grin, holding her chilli fries with her other hand by her side and so she going ‘come on take a photo, take a photo.’ She only had one breast out at that stage, and I was taking a bit of time focusing the camera, just telling her, ‘excuse me sorry, I’m just taking a bit of time to get it all focused, just bear with me’. So while she’s standing there waiting she pulls her other boob out, and I’m just giggling, waiting for something to happen and then her friends, or a family member, or someone that knew her drove past and she’s like ‘Hey whatuuuuup!?’ with the chilli fries in one hand, two breasts out and just going YEAH! I clicked it and the camera makes this huge clunking noise. When I got the film back in Australia I was jumping up and down, cracking up. I was the best. I love it when stuff like that happens. You know, she’d asked me to take a photo of her, so I took my time and I knew that I could get something out of it, but I didn’t expect how good that was, just not looking at the camera, yelling at her friends with her boobs out holding the chilli fries!”

The art of capturing that moment is something Ryan says takes a different approach each time. “I guess if you notice someone that you want to take a photo of you can kind of read their body language if they’re open to a small conversation and a photo or times that you’ve just got to shoot from the hip, because you have to get an image of that person because they’re just so interesting. It’s like using different cameras; you use a different approach for each situation. It’s also the way people react to cameras, like if you’ve got a huge one then people kind of freak out, but if you look like a photography student or like a Dad photographer or whatever, just anything but a creep, you know. Everyone’s got cameras now, and I think a lot of people are starting to think that a lot of people with cameras have bad intentions, which is really hard for photographers who just want to capture, like the right now and life on the street. Like if you take a photo I’ve noticed how crazy people can get about privacy and stuff.”

When asked about his background Ryan starts from the beginning “I was born in Paddington, Sydney 1981. My father was a musician and he was gigging around Sydney when I was small, then we moved out west. A couple of years later when I was nine, all of a sudden we were moving up onto the Central Coast. I grew up there surfing the reefs, beach breaks as well. A place called Avoca beach. My parents owned and ran a store. So I grew up there. I went to all an all boys’ school on the water at East Gosford, a really nice school. I did photography, I sucked at all the other subjects but I loved photography and industrial design, like rendering and drawing plans. I sucked at maths and English, oh I was OK at English, nah I was shitty at that too. But I loved all the hands on subjects.”

A love of the hands on lead Ryan to enrol in a Tafe course studying graphic design, which then lead to a course of Fine Art Photography. “I didn’t really learn anything that I didn’t already know, but it was a nice way to spend 3 to 4 days a week in the darkroom everyday and that was the sickest. Just you know, going there at 9 o’clock and then coming out in the dark, just so good, so much fun in the dark room. I was catching the train from Gosford to Hornsby each day, along the Hawkesbury River, which is one of the most commonly done trips that any kid growing up on the Central Coast has to do, to Sydney from Gosford. You just tune out and all of a sudden, you’re there. It’s one of the best train trips ever; it was so good to commute like that. I think that the Central Coast is so good for people that want to commute to Sydney because it’s just such a picturesque bloody train ride, I loved it.”

Soon Ryan left Tafe and went on to his first ever full time job as a photographer, working for a real estate agent on the central coast. “The guy who hired me had been given a chance when he was at a young age and I was about 19, and anyway he gave me a job helping him market the houses. So what I used to do was take the photos of every house that he’d list. I was getting paid by the real estate agents, he was forking out my entire salary each week and I got a petrol card and I was earning about, I don’t know, but it felt like I was easy street, I could buy music and pay rent. It was one of the best, most exciting jobs I ever had. I got to photograph sunrises at beach houses and beautiful big French castles out in the bush and amazing concept houses, hobby farms, I shot a venison farm once. So it was a lot of high end stuff, and that taught me everything about photography.”

During his time at the real estate agent Heywood was living on the beach in the Central coast, enjoying life “It was a wild time, just surfing out the front of my house, it was party party, surf surf, take photos, you know, go surfing, load the housing up and shoot a roll with your friends. I’ve always loved shooting surfing, shooting the barrel; it’s one of my favourite things.” Ryan’s eyes lose focus for a bit and he laughs. “I love the barrel” he repeats. “My first memory about the ocean being a playground was at Avoca beach when one of the kids I knew took me away from nippers and goes ‘have you ever been in a barrel?’ I’m like ‘no man’, and he’s like, ‘well check this out’, and we stood sort of kneeling or crouching looking at each other in the water and he’s like ‘stay there, stay like this, watch me, watch me’ and then we sort of stood there and this wave bottomed out and fully barrelled over us and I was like ‘wooahhhhhhhh’ and you could hear it echo through the barrel and that was when I was like YES, this is sick, I couldn’t believe it. That was so classic, Avoca Beach shorey. I love shoreys.”

Aside from being a photographer and artist at heart, Ryan Heywood is also a surfer, which has led him to tie his two passions together. Ryan is now employed by Rip Curl as a boardshort designer and has done plenty of freelance work for other companies in the industry. Companies like RVCA and Short Straw have used his photographic talents in the past. One of Ryan’s favourite projects to work on was on The Morning of the Mo’ Surfing event, a 70’s vibe charity event inspired by legendary surf film Morning of the Earth. “Nat (Nathaniel Johnsen, creator of the event) called me, I think he found out about me from my website, which was listed on Design is Kinky. He wanted me to shoot this surf comp in Ballina and that he’d put me up and feed me and buy the film which I was stoked about, you know, pay for the film and developing and I was like, you’re on, I’d love a weekend at Byron Bay, I love it up there. So I went up and shot the event and made a lot of friends. I was stoked because everything was for charity and it was such a laugh and such a good time with great surroundings. It’s a super cool surf event. I think that’s what a surf event should feel like; fun, family, sun and surf you know.”

It pretty much seems at this point that Ryan doesn’t have a bad thing to say about anything. However he does have interesting comments when pushed to say something controversial. “I think it’s funny how as the technology is getting more and more advanced with digital, don’t get me wrong I love digital, I love how good it’s getting, but it seems like a lot of the companies that are driving the now now now shots are compromising their quality and not getting together and saying let’s keep the standard up. The photos you send away to the Billboard are different to the ones you send to the mags, you’ve got to be careful, because kids aren’t holding the mag 50 feet away from their face, and every kid knows how to use a computer and knows how to operate resolution of a photo. I think that’s a bad step in flying the flag for your particular company. Does that make any sense? That’s my bitch anyway, it’s a small bitch. Actually I don’t want to be a bitch, don’t put that in.” Sorry Ryan, it’s in.

Another quirk of Mr Heywood’s is that he much prefers to use film over digital. “I kind of like that number of 36 photos in a roll. Like editing 36 shots, or going through to see which ones you like and archiving them and actually holding them in your hand, which is fantastic. What’s hard to fathom is going through thousands and thousands and gigs and gigs of the same colour background to find that one shot, because the moment could be lost in your editing, which is fuckin’ devastating. And you can’t hold them, you can hold the hard-drive that they’re in but you can’t hold the shot, it’s like, what? Where are you file? Or what if the file becomes corrupt?” He’s quick to add that he is very protective of his negatives. “I shit myself about my negs too, like I’ve got a fire drill. My negs are all in 2 easy pick up crates, or actually, 3 or 4 easy pick up crates and I’ve drilled myself a few times and timed myself. I don’t know what my time is, but it’s pretty quick, grab the negs go! I’m so scared, I turn every switch off at the wall, because my mate’s a fireman and he tells me things like mobile phone chargers just explode, get your bed spread and then you’re done for.”

Right now, aside from designing boardshorts, Ryan is looking to the future for more interesting things to do. “I like experimenting. A special project would be good. A project with a great budget, something new like rigging different heights and working with different levels and perspectives, trolley tracking shots, you know, be it moving images or still action. I just want to be good at all of it. I like macro, with flowers and things, but it doesn’t excite me as much as action and people and emotion, because you don’t get much emotion from a moth or a bee on a leaf. Well I guess it can be kind of cutesy if you get a lady beetle or something but you don’t get much emotion from a moth.”

A project that is just about to emerge from Studio Heywood is a bodysurfing website; bodysurf.com.au “I’ve got some fantastic contributors who have sent me some of the most amazing work and I’m just trying to put it together for this online zine that will do it justice, do all those shots justice. There’s some incredible people that have given me some just awesome shots, drawings and words and it’s a fun project for me because it’s so untouched by corporate Australia Surf. Like if you look at any of the other bodysurfing sites they’re put together by like html George in his garage you know, and they may have like one sponsor but they’re still really small, because how do you market body surfing? You can’t because they can’t sell anything for it because you don’t use anything to do it. There’s nothing you really need, accept summer, you need summer that’s for sure and that’s awesome. That’s all I really wanted to do with the website, I’ve been getting lots of submissions but it’s still open. I want to see if I can get everyone contributing, be it from a mobile phone camera, disposable, photocopy, or whatever, but just all about bodysurfing, I don’t want any boards. I think the body surf thing is just so crucial, you can change your body from sort of a gun to a 6 foot floppy board or go rigid and change, put your hands by your side and torpedo, you can take half of your body out of the water so you’ve got a longer line and less body in the water so you can ride high. Yeah I think it’s great. So I’m putting that together.

With a full time job, side photography projects and a website on the go, Ryan doesn’t seem like he has much spare time, but he still manages to go for a log ride down the road from his house and have other small adventures. I personally can’t wait to see how the bodysurfing site turns out, because anything he produces is with patience and love, which is a recipe for gold. In the meantime keep your eyes to the skies, because there is a young artist out there who looks like a Grizzled Old Man of the Sea and he is looking for people to ‘shoot’. When he shaves off his beard he’ll look like a freckle faced, cental coast kid who just wants to go surfing. You won’t know it’s him lurking around the corner wanting to ‘capture’ you next. Consider yourself warned, Ryan Heywood is on the loose.