Cut to 20 years later, and he and I connect on Facebook, find out we’re nearly neighbors, and decide to start running together. I also find out the dude is happily engaged and about to become happily married. Eventually I meet his betrothed, the sweetest Natalie, and how could I not offer to photograph this event, (which I half expect Eddie Vedder to show up to by the way).

Kariem and I have been running out by the Otay Lake reservoir and the afternoons had been glowing brilliantly lately, so I suggested that as a great place for photos. They also wanted to shoot over at Glorietta Bay in Coronado to commemorate where they met while training for triathlons.

So we headed over there too. The both of them can bring the expression like nobody’s business. Hope you enjoy the photos.

Film & Equipment:
Color = Hasselblad 501c + 80mm Zeiss + Fuji 400H
B&W1 = Zeiss Ikon Rangefinder + 35mm Zeiss Biogon + Tri-X
B&W2 = Nikon F100 + 85mm 1.8D + Tri-X

William Bay is a Kariem & Natalie’s Engagement Session in Coronado & Otay Lake.

That one trip spawned a love affair with the thousand mile stretch of rugged, untamed Old California that still exists today. Since moving back to San Diego, I’ve been itching to get back down and do a little surf trip. I finally got the opportunity to escape for a week, and with a good solid Southern-Hemi on it’s way, I set my sites on the Southern exposed Scorpion Bay.

I just acquired a new Zeiss Ikon camera, and thought it was the perfect time to test it out and give it its due. So I grabbed 4 rolls of Tri-X B+W film, 3 surfboards, my laptop, and followed the compass South. This trip down was pretty uneventful. The North road down to Scorpion Bay used to eat vehicles for lunch, but was pretty smooth driving (as far as Baja roads go). And some of the sections are actually being paved. While I had about 4 days of great waist to shoulder high waves, the swell I was expecting got blown out by a big low pressure coming across the peninsula. I figured I would head back, and catch some of the swell further North, but I did get stuck a couple times by massive amounts of rain fall shutting down the highway.

In Yvon’s words, it wasn’t a true adventure, but there were some exciting moments. And now, I’ll shut up, and let you enjoy some photos. Please let me know what you think.

William Bay is a Scorpion Bay Surf Trip.

I can only liken it to a religious kind of an experience. The Bio-luminescence I spoke of the other day was out in force. And I discovered it’s not just a ‘thing’ that happens, but the waves glowing when they crash is actually the process of millions of individual life forms actually lighting up!!!

As I paddled out into the dead, dark sea,  I was greeted by the first few bio-luminescent plankton critters as they floated up on my board to say ‘Hi, come play in the water with us.
I can’t stress this enough, they are individuals!!! I wanted to name them as they came to see me.

It was a bit creepy paddling out into the darkness, but I had an electrical storm going on over the desert that would light up every few seconds, the bio-luminescence glowing as the waves broke, and a few lights from campers left the bluff outlined.

The waves weren’t actually big enough to ride standing up, so I would belly in on them as far as they would take me. The biggest thrill was to see the bio-luminescent creatures being flung in the air with the spray as I came down the wave, and the board scattered water everywhere.

Because they are individual little beings, one or two would get flung up in the spray particles, and totally light up! And I would just giggle in delight. There really wasn’t more I could do, it was just too awesome.

The tide was super low, so I would end up dragging my fin on the bottom, or the wave would just die out. When the ride was over, I’d just turn out into the blackness and paddle back out again.

While I can’t photograph it, I added a drawing that in no way captures the experience, but gives you an idea of the view from my board staring out to the horizon. The rocks are to the right, and my little glowing friends are in green, floating on top of and around my board.

William Bay is a Night Surfing.

What’s changed?

• I didn’t have to sell my vehicle in a junk yard in San Ignacio because I failed to put oil in it.
• I have gray hair.
• 3 surfboards instead of one.
• I am decked out a laptop, an iPhone and 3 cameras (geez, could I get more pretentious???)There are WAY more people here. There were 10 guys and girls out at 2nd point vibing each other for 2 foot waves during tonight’s evening session.
• Fish tacos are fuckin expensive now! (Well, everything is.

What hasn’t changed?

• The waves that are breaking 5 feet out, and 20 feet down from my tent door still sounds like the most amazing sound in the entire universe. You know those questions that the guy on The Actor’s Studio asks? What sound do you love the most?… Well, I would totally answer that with “Waves peeling from 3rd point to 2nd point at Scorpion Bay”And I still can’t believe that I get to fall asleep tonight listening to that amazing sound.
• I can’t take a picture of it, but the bio-luminescence is showing up too. On the pitch black walk back from having my expensive fish tacos in town (see above), I came up with this amazing postualte that went something like ‘If life is energy, and energy can be expressed in wave form as well, then life inside of energy is the greatest life-form known to man.” Bio-luminescence is a form of plankton that glow when waves break. It’s actually a life form expressing itself in the presence of energy. That’s all it does! Well, that and probably get eaten by whales. But how cool is that????What this particular theorem provides to the scientific community, I don’t know. C’mon, I was on my 5th Tecate.
• The stars! Fucking Oh My Fucking God!!!! I can see the mother fucking Milky Way. And I get to sleep under it tonight!

I’ll post this tomorrow after a morning surf sesh.

William Bay is a 14 years… Scorpion Bay, then and now..

We all decided that it would be the greatest thing in the world to drive out to Joshua Tree during Coachella traffic. Good thing Xanthe’s son Arlo was there to entertain us on the drive out with songs about the mythical and highly Drop Bears of Australia, that perch on trees and kill you dead as you walk under. I think I remember something about Panda Spiders as well…

We got out to Joshua Tree with about 20 minutes of light, and we put Arlo in a elephant costume. And we all photographed and reveled in the serene light and silent beauty that Joshua Tree offers until Arlo stepped on some cactus spines…

William Bay is a The Elephant Boy, Joshua Tree and Drop Bears.

Here are some shots with my great friend Jamie from Austin. She’s super beautiful, so we decided to trailer trash it up a bit at the end and do some donuts around her with my X-Terra while she wore a bikini. Most of these are on film.

William Bay is a Vegas Baby! WPPI Desert Photoshoot.

She said she would if I did some headshots for her acting career back in Austin, and a fine art portrait session to boot. I said “deal!” for sure. So we went to one of my favorite places in the world, Imperial Beach, back in November and did some really cool stuff. I even pulled out the Hasselblad at the end and snapped a few shots at the end (I guessed on exposure).

William Bay is a LeeAn in Imperial Beach.

The music however was quite mind-altering, and far from warm welcoming. From the start my friend James and I were under an all out audio assault as the opening band The Unsane, and then the side act The Long And The Short Of It (who reminded me a lot of The Germs).

Then The Melvins came on.

They did not stop playing their instruments for an hour and a half. It was perhaps the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life (and I’ve seen a few things).
Two drummers, everyone providing vocals, Buzz Osborne wearing some kind of heavy medieval tunic or wizardary outfit. The playing was incredibly precision, both drummers magically in time and I’m convinced causing structural damage to The Casbah’s little building. Forty-five minutes in James turned around to me and said he thought he was “Rocked Out.” I said I was too, yet with my deer in the headlights gaze continuing to remain on the stage.

I’ve been front row for Soundgarden, I’ve gotten a song request through to Eddie Vedder which was played on stage, and my first concert experience was Pink Floyd. But my re-induction into the famed Casbah was by far one of the highlights of this audiophile’s life.

Enjoy a few iPhone photos from the night.

William Bay is a Last Night at The Casbah – The Melvins.

No… nothing as noble as sobriety, I happily drink like a fish. Nor abstaining from red meat, I do love carne asada burritos.
No, none of that. This year, I celebrate 20 years of both Photography and Surfing.

I love surfing. I try to paddle out every day. But I’ll focus on the photography here today.

It’s fitting that in my 20th year I make the move back to the medium of film, the same substrate that filled me with such wonder and desire for adventure back in my gremmie days as a freshman in high school.
As part of the process of moving back to film, I came across my old box of negs from back then which include a lot of images from friends at Mar Vista High School in Imperial Beach. (All I can say is that I have myself some good blackmail material on my hands… My friends should pray that none of this ends up on Facebook).
Maybe I’ll do a full post with all the clean ones.

Out of all the negatives, I decided to pick a favorite from my first year photographing and post it here for kicks. And I’ve chosen the one shown here. It’s not my best photo ever, the story isn’t clear, not a compelling angle, and it isn’t even exposed well…

But what it is for me can never thoroughly be explained in words. The story was greater than this single image, yet for me this single image sums the entire story.
It was a time of exploration, growth and friendship. I guess it was like anyone else’s formative teen-age years, just with a camera to document the events.
Jerry Broderick (the guy in the photo), and I used to ride bmx and freestyle bikes. We’d go hunting for dirt jumps all over town getting into all kinds of trouble, getting lost in Tijuana looking for concrete skatepark playgrounds.
It was our own version of Dogtown and Z-Boyz. I’d have my camera on hand to document the events and even at one point got one of my photos of Jerry published in Transworld Magazine.
In this particular image, Jerry had just fallen after attempting something like a 360 over a dirt jump down in the estuary trails in Imperial Beach.
The funny aspect to the image is that the T-shirt he’s wearing is for a company called Dirt Brothers Inc, and it says “100% Dirt” underneath the dirt…

I look back at this image and I see that I was on a journey, often times a real journey to find a new jump with Jerry, or to find a cool place to photograph. But I was also on a metaphorical journey to explore my passion and where that fit in this great big world.

After 20 years of my love affair with capturing images; the good times and bad, the years where I didn’t even feel like picking up a camera, the times when I couldn’t put the camera down, all the missed shots, and all the award winners, the scratched negatives, the digital camera failures… I guess the journey then is the same as the journey now.

By the way I was no slouch when it came to riding either. That’s me on the left (I think Jerry took that one with the high school’s Twin Lens Reflex. And Jerry doing a wall ride over another friends bike at the Palomar Culvert in Chula Vista on the right.

William Bay is a 20 Years Ago.

We did the reshoot in La Jolla where I know of a little cove that provides some nice privacy. I’ve got the film back and I’m absolutely in love! With both the stunning beauty of Tamara, and with the Hasselblad! It’s an amazing camera, and I can’t wait to shoot more film. What’s more, to see these images full size, you can see why Carl Zeiss lenses are the best in the game.

Have a look at these beauties we shot at my secret spot in La Jolla. What do you think? She’s amazing huh?

Film was T-Max 400, and Fuji Pro-H 400.

William Bay is a Tamara’s Fine Art Portraits.