East Coast photographer Trent Mitchell has won awards and countless spreads from Inside Sport to every decent surf magazine in the world for his pitch-perfect mix of light, action and flawless composition.
When he pitched a feature idea based around a drive into the desert in search of ferociously ugly reef waves with three professional bodyboarders, the sport's flagship magazines baulked. Bodyboarding has never been a cashed-up sport, and there's not much budget for this sort of malarkey.
They went anyway, spending weeks stumbling around the coasts of South Oz and WA, found insanely heavy waves under the cliffs of the Bight and got into all the trouble you'd hope to when you're young driving through the desert.
The best action shots found a home in print, but Trent has collated what was left on the cutting room floor into a
photo essay you can check out here.
The photos won't tell the stories behind the tow-trucks, bloodied lips, remote surgeries or desolate slabs of open ocean, but they will give you itchy feet and a hankering to get into a part of Australia we don't often experience.
essay.tmphoto.com.au