Surf's Up

December 31, 2023 Lydia Armstrong

In 2023, my friend Parker and I started saying, “Surf’s up,” at the end of every voice message we sent each other. We send a lot of them, and long ones—sometimes fifteen or twenty minute monologues about how we are and what we’re doing, and sometimes about nothing at all. I don’t remember how we started the surf’s up thing, except that one day one of us said it, and decided from that moment on to always say it. Sometimes when things are not great we end our messages by saying, “Surf’s down,” or if things are hectic we might say, “Surf is wild,” or some other variant while chuckling grimly.

Somewhere in the origin of this habit is the fact that also in 2023, I took several day trips to Virginia Beach to photograph surfing, and some of my friends (including Parker) came to associate surfing with me, even though I have never surfed myself and have no plans to. I started photographing surfing in 2022 because I love the ocean and I liked to photograph skateboarding, and it made sense. My first season on the beach felt like the beginning of a new passion, but that momentum petered out when I returned this year. For one thing, I started too early, driving out to the jetty in the spring before the Mid-Atlantic has seen any waves—those don’t show up around here until late summer or fall. I loved waking up at 3am and making the two hour drive to catch the sunrise glittering across the low waves, but not much action to capture. In August I repeated last year’s journey to ECSC, an annual surf competition held at Virginia Beach. Both years I booked an Airbnb for a four days and woke up before dawn to photograph the competition and the sunrise, but this year felt grueling despite the fact I booked a nicer room, closer to the jetty where the competition took place, and could easily walk to more places than last year. The heat was oppressive and a casual walk down the strip to find lunch wiped me out. My favorite parts of the trip were lying in my air conditioned room, taking a nap. I felt less invested in the surfing, and the photos, the whole reason I’d come, which could have been the weather, or could have been because by August, I was already kind of over it.

I think I took something I had an interest in and tried to do too much of it. Or rather, I did a higher ratio of it than my interest in it allowed. I do like to photograph surfing, and I do like to wake up early and drive to the beach and watch the sunrise, and learn new terms for things I didn’t know anything about before. I just don’t like it enough to do that every month for most of the year, which is what I did in 2023, and wound up with eight million photos of the same surf shot on the same stretch of beach over the same golden/purple/hot pink sunrise backdrop.

In 2024, I am sure I will kill at least one roll of film in that same setting, but if I’m being honest, probably not more than one roll. I think that’s a closer-to-the-truth ratio of action and interest. And now, on this last day of 2023, tired of scrolling through the folder on my iPhone of photos I haven’t posted yet and being affronted with a wall of water and surfers, I am dumping a bunch of them here, to leave them behind once and for all. Parker and I will still say “Surf’s up,” at the end of all of our voice messages, because we like it and we think it’s funny and it’s too late now. And I will still make that 3am drive to catch the sunrise, but I will wait until the season is right and the waves are in fact up, so I can cherish it.

Here are all the shots I do not want to take with me across midnight.

Looking back on these as I posted them here, I concede these are all actually really dope shots. Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful. Happy New Year.

The Year of Radically Less Spending

December 18, 2023 Lydia Armstrong

I shot one hundred rolls of film this year.

I shot over ninety in 2022. I’m averaging about eight rolls a month. For some film shooters, this is nothing; for others, it’s a shit ton. I would say I’m running on the higher end of things, and it’s catching up to me.

I’ve always worked the expense of shooting film into my budget. Photography is not my paid profession—I have a day job, and the bulk of my photographic work are personal projects. The occasional paid shoot or print sale makes a shallow dent in the cost. And while it often feels like photography is my whole life, there are other things here too. There are things I want to do in the coming years, and I need to save money and pay down debt. After much deliberation, over the course of months, I have decided to embark on a year of radically less spending. And the first thing that comes to mind is film photography.

There are a lot of things I’m already used to spending less money on—clothes and shoes and gadgets and travel—because I allot most of my “extra money” to film photography. But I asked myself, what would a year look like in which I bought nothing I didn’t need, limited or eliminated overnight trips, gave myself a small biweekly allowance for drinks or eating out, and shot substantially less film? Aside from the financial goals I could achieve, I became intrigued by how my processes would be changed. I imagined shopping my own closet for things I never wear. I imagined challenging myself to shoot one roll of film a month (outside of paid shoots).

In the last couple weeks, as I’ve honed in on what this plan would actually look like, a Rolodex of images has flipped through my mind—all the photographs I’ve taken over the last year. I didn’t need to shoot so many rolls of surfing—as it turns out, most of the frames look the same, and the collection of them overall comprises my least exciting work of the year. I started off (with a new haircut) taking a lot of self-portraits but got less focused as the year drew on. And my most favorite images are of rodeos and Barbies, hands down. This look back has helped me prepare to navigate a year of less film and how to best spend those limited rolls.

I don’t think allowing one roll of film per month for my personal projects is realistic or feasible. There are things that require different ISO speeds or color film or black and white. When I was still floating the one-roll idea, a friend asked me, “What if someone gives you a roll?” And I said I would still limit myself to one per month, because I had to develop it too, and if I made one exception for myself, I’d make others. But the more I thought about it, the less this made sense, especially if the original point is to save money, not restrict my creativity.

So in the end, this is what I’ve come up with: I can purchase one roll of film per month for the entire year of 2024, and I can pay to develop one roll per month. I can shoot as much as I have. I can trade for film and for developing. And the very paltry monthly earnings from my Patreon page, which at this moment is about the price to develop one roll of film after my two subscriptions to other artists are deducted, can pay for a second roll developed each month, if I have it. (This in conjunction with the non-photographic expense cutting mentioned above.)

I’ll probably pre-purchase about half of those rolls at one time, to save on shipping, and play it fast and loose with the rest. It’s not as restrictive as limiting myself to shooting one a month, but it will still be far fewer frames than I’m used to, and I’m very interested to see how this change will impact my creative process. I’m excited at the prospect of fine-tuning the projects that I’m truly excited about, and also to explore more mixed-media collaging and video work with my old HandyCam camcorder. And maybe, maybe, maybe, I’ll finally finish my novel.

So in cheers to the year to come, and in honor of the year behind me, here are my top favorite photos of 2023. There are 35 of them. I did not choose a specific number—I just saved the ones that felt like real favorites. They’ll serve as inspiration for the year ahead, and hopefully inspire someone else out there too.