Surf Photographer
Mickey Smith
My passport says Michael Lee Smith - British Citizen; but my friends call me Mickey, the Cornish gypsy. I was born in 1980, raised in a village called Paul, in West Cornwall, England. I presently work a senior contributors spot at Orca Publications in the UK and Morrison Media in Australia.
As I doubt such facts are of interest however, here's a few thoughts and reflections instead....
- Wanderlust grew in me as a kid on that Celtic coastline
- 50 miles of weathered old bays, haunting the imagination with secrets to decode, solely through time invested. Wandering and watching, learning local intricacies...
- I'm still waiting to get lucky.
- From Porthleven to Porthcurno, round Lands End and Cape Cornwall. Past Pendeen and Zennor and on again towards St Ives. It's exposed, wild, cold and beautiful...
- Coast with tales to tell; home.
- Hours spent urging raw elements to merge in centrefold style, (and the lack of such sugary clichés in return), pushed us to rethink our visions of 'Perfection' back then.
- Forgotten waves, some deemed unrideable; became playgrounds, watery classrooms.
- Life lust and lessons learned at those rare, warped corners of untouched Kernow soon sent me searching - for coast where similar slabs of ocean are the norm.
- I'm magnetised to familiar feeling frontiers.
- Iceland, Tahiti, Southern and Western Australia, The Azores, Madeira, Ireland. Isolated, beautiful stretches with Cornish quirk in their personalities and a damn sight more reef potential.
- These are places that pull my strings year in year out, the latter more than most...
- Enchanted since my first hike to the 'Emerald Isle' at 17, I knew I'd be spending seasons there the moment I first felt the girth of Atlantic Guiness.
- Ireland milks my marrow over almost anywhere in the world...
- She's been really, really good to me - Ten years on and I'm still back for longer each year... Jokers say I'll end up settling there, but being fixed up anywhere in this game could blunt the keen edginess of passing through.
- New frontiers for the right waveriders to challenge... This is where my heart beats hardest.
- Solid ocean swells powering through deep water, exploding onto shapely, shallow ledges. Heavy waves, waves with weight, these are waves I like to experience, whose antics I love to document.
- Some scare the living shite out of me.
- Subservience, life at the beckon call of mother nature, simultaneously offers both fulfilment and chaos. Über highs and doubt filled comedowns. Surrendering hope, coin, lives even; to the hands of forces that know no master.
- Though it's easy to romanticise over, it's a funny old game, believe you me...
- One taste of treasure though, falling on your feet instead of your face; it makes all patience and effort seem justified and worthwhile - for a few moments at least...
- 'Til that next finger beckons. 'Transient' has become my most enduring quality...
- Lady Fate, Lady Luck. Call her what you will - she's a best friend and one icy seductress all at once. She alone decides where I'll end up tomorrow, what I'll find waiting.
- Hopefully it's a little reassuring sanity...
- Considering such politics of 'peace of mind' though, if I stop looking inside out for a while, I'm pretty damn content living 'as is' right now. Reading the signs restlessly, letting her mystery's unfold as they surely will...
- It's worked out alright so far anyways...
Thanks for your time, and all the very best to you and yours, Mickey.
