One of the great joys of the internet is the ease with which communication with people of diverse interests and locations can take place. This does not, however, mean such communication takes place with any regularity. Most often it is a form of "searching for treasure" with no real result, until one day you check your email and find several messages from someone you've never heard of, most containing digital images you were not expecting. Against all advice of experts you open said images, and choke back laughter and delight at what you find. Sometimes it can be obscene and offensive to a real New Millenium degree, and sometimes you find out you aren't the only one stabbing away at the darkness. While so much of the surf media has become about conformity reinforcement, there are people out there happily going their own way.
Such a person is Roger Wayland. He was not only kind enough to send the photos which accompany this piece, but he also gave such detailed answers to a few quick questions that the following pages make a good primer for anyone who might like to follow their own leads. While certainly Roger doesn't, and I don't, claim that anything he is doing is revolutionary or even particularly new, his mindset and enthusiasm is a far cry from the jaded consumerism so rampant among U.S. surfers who aren't boardbuilders themselves. |
