Russell Pike Landscape Photography

The barrels and Landscape photos are coming thick and fast, although the photography has taken a back seat since the 0.0 tides kicked in on the Bukit peninsula. Racetracks is the name of the game with evenings being spent under the relentless crystal lips that pound down on the sharp reef lurking a few feet below the surface. If I had to mention one reason I keep coming back to Bali, for all of what it’s amazing for, the moments in these photos would be it. There is nothing better then getting shacked, whether it’s in home or foreign seas. What’s realistically about, on average, 3 to 5 seconds spent zooming through a barrel oddly seems like minutes within. Then after the session with all this tube time clocked up you just switch off to everything else around you and look vacantly into thin air replaying the moments back in your head. Sitting down to dinner with friends and trying to pull away from this uncontrollable daydream is hard work.

The tracks of racing is doing a good job at priming me for what’s to come in Western Australia. A few days ago the swell jumped up that outside corner was breaking near enough top to bottom. Sitting just wide and inside of these bomb sets and catching the white water/fat shoulder then ripping a huge cutback right into the pocket while it wall’s up and barrel’s its tits off, to a F1 champagne style finish that’s getting spat out with the force of re-fitting your t-shirt up around your tummy is what makes racetracks my favourite wave it the world. I know many of you bodyboarders reading this will know exactly what I mean. An appointment with FedEx has been booked in about shipping this patch of reef home with me.

Thanking Diogo Dorey for these shots, I just got lucky that he was in the right spot at the right time; water housing shots in the Indian Ocean are as rare as rocking horse shit. Luckily he was showing some previous Padang photos the next day to some Aussie lads that are staying next door. So I snapped them up quickly before he left for the Mentwais.

So we are counting down the days till we go down under in search of perfect coastline wilderness and countless beach breaks, point breaks, slabs, and wedges. Now its 3pm in Bali and something will no doubt start firing again any moment. So no guess’s where I’m going, hopefully my arm doesn’t kiss the reef again this session leaving some fleshy racetracks of my own.

UPDATE: Well what do you know; I signed off leaving for racetracks on the post above and just my luck a photographer called Trevor managed to snag these shots of the session towards sunset as well as one of the usual Balinese photographers that line the cliffs shooting a frame while I race the curtain.