I wasn’t sure what to expect. I never met the hair-covered Belgian. I drove to Hilo Airport and picked up a guy waving a suitcase and a surfboard at me. It could have been anyone, but I figured it was Andy aka @gutterdust. We loaded my pickup truck with his gear and headed out.
Social media is interesting, if nothing else. I’ve met a million people through Instagram and Andy is one of them. He travels around the world shooting models, surf and palm trees. Not a bad gig. What brought us together was film photography and surf. We both love using the old Nikonos camera and a variety of film. When his travels took him to Hawaii, it seemed natural I should offer him a place to crash – after all, what are friends who’ve never met for? He surfs, I surf. He likes film, I like film. He enjoys beer, I enjoy beer. An agreeable combination.
During the week he stayed with me, I think we shot a combined 40 rolls of film from as many cameras. I have about 30-odd cameras and Andy brought about ten. We blasted through color reversal, black and white, infrared, and color negative like it was rapid fire burst mode on digital. The surf was mostly flat, but we scored a few nice days in the water. If there wasn’t a swell, we went to Volcanoes National Park or hit Southpoint to cliff jump. We were determined to have an adventure of some kind. The photos included here are a small selection from the week.
I’m glad to have met Andy and to keep up correspondence with him. We recently shot multiple exposures together from Hawaii and Biarritz on an expired roll of Kodak Gold. It was great having him as a guest, even if he could secretly be an axe murder – one never knows with stranger friends from Instagram.
See more of Mike’s work on alohabigmike.com, on Instagram: @aloha_bigmike and check out Andy too: @gutterdust.
