Our Mat, Back To Make His Own Wooden Surfboard. ‘Frame By Frame’.

16 . 08 . 22

In May this year we welcomed back Mat, our friend and former Otter colleague, who had returned for the week, after having worked here for 10 years, to finally make his own wooden surfboard!

Throughout the week he documented the making process, and his experience as a workshopper. He has kindly offered to premiere some of the photos here, creating a journal piece in the inimitable and ever creative Mat style that we know and love. Enjoy!!

‘Over the ten years that I worked with Otter Surfboards, I photographed and wrote about the experiences of well over a hundred people who joined James to make their own wooden surfboards. At the start of May this year I returned to the workshop to make a surfboard of my own. As somebody who makes photographs and writes for pleasure as well as for work, I couldn’t not document my experience. I did wonder though how I would do it in a way that felt right for me, and without making it feel forced.’

‘Whenever presented with a creative challenge like this, particularly for a personal project, I return to embrace the constraints of shooting 35mm film with a prime lens (so no zooming in our out). On the Sunday night before the workshop began I put a roll of Kodak Portra 400 film into the most reliable of my old film cameras, clicked a 50mm lens onto the front of it, and was ready to go. There were 36 exposures on the roll, so I could shoot up to seven photos each day with one to spare. This was going to be how I recorded my memories of my week back in the workshop making a 9’7” wooden surfboard…’