all photos (c) 2014 Joel Coleman Photography
Surfing in PNG

Joel Coleman is a cool character. The Perfect Wave have been working with him for a few years now, sending him to exotic locations all around the world to have him take his professional photos for our clients on Saltmotion Photography Surf Trips. The locations have one thing in common: world-class waves and great setups such as PNG surf, Maldives, Mentawai, and Solomon Islands.

Yup – Joel has somewhat of a dream job. Although, don’t be fooled to think these trips are just a vacation for him. His work days are know to be 8+ hours spent in water taking photos, and in his room processing the daily shots so that he can share a slideshow in the evening, and update his daily ocean photography blog.

Recently, he joined PNG Explorer on an exploratory mission to Bougainville in PNG to check out some of the newly-discovered waves. Whilst they didn’t score a big swell the first time around, a quick swell alert was all that Joel needed to return back there a few days later…

Surfing in PNG

Would you drop everything to score this wave?

by Joel Coleman

I had just returned home from a two and a half week exploratory charter to Bougainville aboard the PNG Explorer. The region visited was incredible, however the swell direction and winds were not really playing the game and I came home still craving more. I had been home just over a week, the surf in Sydney was terrible and the Australian Open of Surfing was doing its best to hype up one foot onshore slop at my local beach.

I was awake well before dark on a Thursday morning, the surf was bad and the onshore had been blowing all night. With nothing to do until the sun came up, I was scratching around on Facebook when I received a message from the captain of the PNG Explorer saying the swell of the season was on its way and could I get back to PNG within 24 hours to make the next charter…?

I dropped everything, canceled everything else and called The Perfect Wave to book a flight, within a half hour one of the team had a ticket emailed to me and I was on my way. A wave like this is worth infinitely more than anything else that was in my calendar.

Enjoy the photo gallery!

Written by:
Ben Horvath

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