A Visual Tribute To The Below Sea Level Slab

A few hundred metres off the coast of Western Australia’s remote and rugged shore flat rock shelves emerge from the murky depths, ready to snag lines of approaching swell and morph them into thick lipped, mutant beasts.

These waves have long created a siren-like draw for lensmen, who spend days sat on the back of skis or floating just out of the impact zone, attempting to immortalise those brief moments of sculptural beauty that occur milliseconds before the wave detonates. Two photographers who’ve dedicated themselves to this pursuit are Philip Thurston and Matt Blakers, and now they’ve decided to create a moving image memento of one of their shooting missions.

“There is something about the slab, something so unique, that keeps drawing me back, again, and again, and again. Maybe it’s the way they move, the water that bends and refracts into shapes and obscure figures, each radically different from the next. Maybe each one is telling a story and I can’t get enough of their tales. Or maybe, they are proclaiming a greater truth, in a language that I can’t quite yet understand, a language that I can only observe for now.” said Philip of his love for the slabular wave form.

Read the full story from the trip and see a selection of images on Thurston’s website here.