Behind the Lens #2- Toby Butler

Introducing a brand new weekly feature, where we invite photographers, some long standing and acclaimed, others exciting up and comers, to show you one of their images and tell the story that surround the making of it. This is Behind The Lens.

For the second addition we welcome Cornish photographer Toby Butler, with a story from a memorable trip to Scotland:

“It was a trip with Passenger Clothing that got us out to Scotland.. Us being Myself and good friends Christian Mcleod, Barry Mottershead and Rich Sutcliffe from Passenger. We had headed out to Scotland with a really loose plan that was basically just to get lost in our beautiful surrounding’s and get stuck into whatever we came across. Its always rad to embark on a trip with such a loose plan because you never know what your going to come across and what the trip could consist of. It was definitely nice to have this in Scotland because the place is jammed with epic landscapes and its got a ton of good waves too! Anyway, so it was about three days in I think that we found ourselves heading to a spot to explore and hopefully get some waves too. We had seen that some swell was coming and I think Barry was pretty eager to get in the water as he had probably had enough of constantly stopping and starting the van because of the words ” that lights nuts, let’s just snap a photo or two real quick”. We rocked up at this spot and we all jumped out the van for a stretch and to peer over the cliff’s and see if we had lucked out on the swell. We were pretty pleased to see that there was waves and with just one guy out that was taking off on whatever he pleased. We then spotted someone heading up the cliff with a broken board and got chatting to him, turns out it was Noah Cohen and in the water was Pete Devries. They’d been out for a few weeks with Ben Gulliver and Mark McInnis filming for a new video that was all about documenting surfing in the colder parts of the planet. It was so rad to wander around shooting Pete tuck into numerous barrels with just him and a local seal out in the water, we then headed to a few other spots after that and ended up pitching our tent in the garden of where these guys were staying. A night of story telling and a solid meal with a group of people that were just after the same as us was highly welcomed after 3 solid nights in our Tentipi! Something that always get’s me really stoked to travel and especially when its through surfing is the people you meet along the way. Who would of thought that on this pretty spontaneous trip we’d be in the northern most part of Scotland and share empty waves with these guys that were just after the same as us.. Some cold water barrels and a few good tales to take home.” 

You can see the rest of the amazing series from which this is taken on Toby’s website here. And check out his instagram for more of his work here.