Colour Blinded by the Light

Ric Syme’s life journey of obsessions – Surfing, Karate and Photography.

By Errol Considine

How does a one-time Trigg grommet become a multi award winning photographer and forge a 40+ year professional career – when you’re colour blind?!

In Ric Syme’s case – by a single-minded obsession with the craft of creating images, and carving his own unique pathway.

But photography was only a third obsession in his life …

Ric’s first started in 1960 when his family moved to a new house on the corner of West Coast Drive and Kathleen Street, Trigg (one street north of Karrinyup Road).

Eleven year old Ric and his brother Robert (two years younger) got into surfing “pretty much straight away… wooden boards with a bung …so cumbersome and heavy,” said Ric.

“Surfing became an obsession. You could see Trigg Point from the house but we surfed straight across the road and down the limestone cliff. We had our own little fantasy …we called it ‘The Bowl’ and next to it was ‘Little Rincon’. The surf was seriously bad but we went there anyway and we made do. That was when we were really young but then later we started walking further afield – to Triggs and Mettams.”

There were also local surf buddies like Rod Slater, Mick ‘Spike’ Wynne and his brother Greg, Brian Hood and Ian ‘Moochie’ Strongman.

The Syme brothers joined Scarborough Board Club – one of the main clubs on the coast along with Cottesloe, City Beach, Southern Surfriders, Yallingup, Coastals and Warrain, and the other Scarborough-based clubs, North End and Boomerang.

Both Ric and Robert quickly became recognised as really good surfers in that scene.

Ric’s first fibreglass board was a “huge” 10’3’ five-stringer from Cordingleys. He was later to become a gun sponsored rider at Cordingleys and get his boards for free.

His first trip Down South was with his parents, in the family station wagon.

“I was 14. No leg ropes, massive boards. I think I sort of paddled out and paddled back in without catching anything …probably in the Yallingup pool!”

He also began taking Super 8 movies of his mates surfing and screening them in a theatre set up in the garage of the family home for the local crew (when there were no waves). Sadly, the reels of colour film are long gone.

“I would give anything to have some of that footage back … some of that stuff was absolutely historic.”

The Syme family later moved from Trigg to an amazing clifftop house in Mosman Park and Ric and Robert became closer to the Cottesloe crew and guys like Ashley Jones – another great surfer who later became a highly acclaimed WA artist and, with his wife Nina, founded Gunyulgup Galleries near Smith’s Beach.

After getting his driver’s licence, Ric’s life was centred on driving Down South every weekend and living the life. The surfing obsession was all consuming.

“Every Friday night, pack it up, get a six-pack and head off.”

The 70s – new obsessions to replace Surfing

Ric finished surfing around 1973-74 when marriage, two children and adult responsibilities meant having the chart a new course in life. 

And pursuing a new obsession – photography. It was to be an all-consuming personal passion which has now continued for nearly 50 years behind one of this beloved Canon cameras.

Back around that same time, a third personal passion kicked in… literally!

“Karate replaced surfing, like as a sporting obsession. I did that with the same sort of obsession as surfing.”

Ric learnt karate from the great black belt legend Brian Mackie, who had been the bouncer at many of the Saturday night surf crew ‘stomps’ at venues like Cottesloe, Swanbourne and Scarborough Surf Clubs.  Nobody messed with Brian! And if it ‘hit-the-fan’ at one of these gigs (which happened pretty regularly), the safest place to be was behind Brian!

The black belt master later married the beautiful young ranked surfer Gail Sherrington (3^rd Women’s State titles, Yallingup 1969; finalist Spring titles, Scarborough)…but I digress…

“I was training four or five nights a week and to my surprise got in the State karate team in 1977,” said Ric.

One night at a sparring session, Ric accidentally whacked big (actually make that ‘huge’) Brian on the nose and drew blood – BIG MISTAKE! Ric was quickly reminded of his place in the dojo pecking order …” I could barely walk back to the car!”

He and Brian Mackie do remain mates to this day …

“My first opponent in the National all styles Karate Championships was this guy from Victoria… some guys are just naturally aggressive and plain nasty. They want to hurt you. He was a full contact heavyweight psychopath. I was happy to tie our bout… which was about as good as it was going to get I reckon. I always struggled with those guys”.

The photography obsession had to chart a different course though …

Finding the light “the hard way”

In 1978, Ric was denied entry to TAFE to study for a tertiary photography qualification due to his severe colour blindness.

“So, I did it the hard way,” he said. “I went to the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) seminars, attending dozens of them as a non-member. They had all these amazing photographers coming from all around the world. And I just picked it up and started my own business.”

He built a darkroom in the laundry of the family home laundry and a studio in the garage.

Within five years, Ric was receiving a few awards and became President of the WA division of the AIPP. Later, he was elected to the institute’s National Council and made a judge of the annual AIPP Photographer of the Year Awards, travelling to most States each year. He was later to also become an in-demand presenter at Institute seminars staged around Australia and New Zealand.

When Fremantle hosted sailing’s America’s Cup in 1986-87, Ric purchased a High Street business, ‘Fotowork’. It did mainly commercial and PR work and had a great darkroom.

Many of the international syndicates hired Fotowork to process the photographic results of their daily trials off Fremantle. Thirty to fifty rolls of B/W film had to be processed and printed before the syndicate’s boats went sailing again, first thing the following morning. The skippers and syndicate chiefs wanted to see and assess how their sails and rigging worked in the WA prevailing winds off Gage Roads. It all had to be done with total secrecy.  No syndicate could see the shots of a rival team’s boat.

“The syndicates had enormous budgets for anything that would help enhance performance, so we charged accordingly!”

During the America’s Cup, Ric also shot a series of promotional pics for Telstra using its first camera-equipped mobile phone …”which, hilariously, was a traditional phone handset attached to a 30 kilogram ‘suitcase’.”

Ric said he thought about pursuing surf photography a few times but “it was really already catered for and I couldn’t see me getting into that and being anywhere near as good as Ric Chan.”

Bridezillas turn to gold

He did pursue another niche and make it somewhat of a personal art form – wedding photography.

Most professional photographers hated and avoided doing weddings as being too unpredictable, with little control and having to cope with bridezillas, mother-in-law’s etc…

“Because it was really hard, made it a challenge …more the reason you’d want to do it …so I figured there’s got to be a way to take really good wedding pictures that people would like, even if they weren’t in them.”

“It backfired a few times because we’d end up shooting stuff that we loved …images that would get a gold award but the client wouldn’t look at it twice. They’d just pass it over and criticise you for not taking what they wanted…oops!”

By trial-and-error, Ric worked out he could shoot what the client wanted early in the job and then take a risk and “do something really out there that could fail badly, but every now and then it was brilliant.”

And that brilliance became recognised with multiple peer-judged industry awards over the years, including:

• Australian Kodak Professional Photographer of the Year 1995
• WA AIPP Wedding Photographer of the Year 1990, 1994, 1998, 2005-2008
• WA AIPP Portrait Photographer of the Year 1998, 2001
• WA AIPP Professional Photographer of the Year 2006, 2008
• Australian Pro Awards, Best people pic 1998, 2005-06
• Australian Pro Awards, Highest Scoring Portfolio 2004; Highest Scoring Cross Category Portfolio 2002

The colour blindness thing saw Ric do a lot of his best work shooting in classic black and white, which also became “a bit of an obsession”.

Monochrome photography can provide incredible nuance and mood, and has produced some of the world’s greatest images. Back in the dark ages of the 20^th Century, black and white film could be manipulated by deft hands during the darkroom developing and printing processes. This could create heightened visual expression of the art which was not as possible with colour film, back in that pre-Photoshop world.

That hands-on darkroom skill also won him other prized awards for Highest Scoring Print.

Great shot from Ric’s personal portfolio and featured on his website – it looks like Waimea Bay shore break in Hawaii but was actually captured on Good Friday 2014 – at City Beach …as a really solid swell was hitting the west coast.

A trip Ric took to Bali some years ago provided him with a rich field of opportunities for vivid images on Legian Beach and nearby street life.

Check out more of Ric Syme’s amazing photographic work at www.syme.com.au

Bells drive for Easter – WTF!

West Australia surfers have always been ready to drive big distances to find waves.

Ric was part of one trip which became WA surfing folklore –just nipping across to Bells Beach …for Easter!?

“Pants (Greg Laurenson) had a new Ford Falcon panel van, so we decided to give it a run and went to Victoria for Easter. We watched a few heats at Bells, turned around and drove back home to Perth!”

And this was back in the day when hundreds of kilometres of the eastern highway’s Nullarbor Plain stretch was an unpaved heavily corrugated limestone track with fine dust which seeped into every pore of the vehicles and passengers!

Perfect for a long weekend jaunt – NOT!!  …or in this case: why not?!

That trip turned out better than one – hatched on the spur of the moment one night at Pinocchio’s nightclub – by Ric’s brother Robert and a couple of his Trigg surfing mates.

They went straight home from the nightclub, loaded up Rob’s VW Country Buggy with boards and bags and headed off after midnight. The intrepid trio got just past Northam and with the passengers snoring, the driver nodded off too. They hit the gravel and spun wildly around.

Gathering their senses and miraculously uninjured, they forged on …not realising the VW had done a 180 in the pitch dark and was pointed back west! They soon saw lights on the horizon and realised it was Perth and the burbs. Defeated, they drove home with their tails between their weary legs and went to bed as the sun was coming up. Classic!

A last epic trip East

In 1969, Ric made a last epic surf trip east to catch some classic waves with some mates.

Along for the ride in Ric’s renowned fitted-out VW Kombi van, were three great WA surfers – Peter ‘Spook’ Bothwell (WA Men’s champion, State titles, Yallingup, 1968-69; 7^th Australian titles, Margaret River, 1969; 2^nd Men’s, State Spring titles, Scarborough, 1968; 4^th Men’s, State titles, Yallingup 1970), Kevin Agar (8^th National titles, Margaret River, 1969; 1^st Men’s, WA Spring titles, Scarborough 1968; 1^st Men’s Trigg Point Open, 1969. And a greater shaper for Cordingleys surfboards) and Steve ‘Sheepdog’ Cockburn (regular Semi-finalist and finalist in WA State titles).

They had good waves at the legendary Cactus, on the Nullarbor desert coast of the wild Southern Ocean.

“No leg ropes …and world record sized white pointers in the areas …yikes!!”

Travelling via Melbourne first, they reached Sydney.

“We all watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon from Soldiers Avenue, Freshwater – a stone’s throw from Dee Why and Curl Curl.”

Heading north up the east coast, they surfed famed right-hand point breaks like Crescent Head and Angourie, hit all the legendary Coolangatta-Gold Coast spots, and then later went on to Noosa.

Paying the price for hobnobbing with the P.M.

Ric said: “Midway through our stay in Sydney I finally acquiesced to go and ‘hobnob it’ with my grandfather (Sir Frank Ledger), who was flying to Sydney to meet with Prime Minister John Gorton and major industry leaders.”

“With my shoulder length blonde hair, thongs, jeans, reeking of weed, facial stubble etc, I had to be smuggled in through the rear entrance of the swanky Wentworth Hotel, due to me being a ‘whisker’ below their minimum dress standard.”

“My mother, who had also travelled to Sydney (with my grandfather), was in charge on my transformation from ‘beach bum loser to something resembling someone who might be more suitable to meet the Prime Minister.”

“As a result, a barber was presented to my room at the Wentworth and – right on cue – June produced my suit, shirt, tie, leather shoes, socks and belt.”

Would the boyz ev-uh make Ric pay for his scrubbed and polished return to the ‘straight’ image? …or yeah …

“Re-uniting with the Kombi crew while sporting short back and sides, clean shaven and smelling of expensive soap was always going to be a ‘hard sell’. Did they think I was an irreversible arsehole?”

“One ‘tell’ is that on arriving in Coolangatta around 11pm, I was asleep in the back of the Kombi and awoke to silence. All I knew is that I needed to pee and that I had no idea where we were.”

“Turns out that the main street of Coolangatta was divided down the middle between Queensland and New South Wales. One side was open and alive, the other dark and asleep. The Kombi was parked in the middle….and, I needed a pee …”

“Fortunately, the side door was on the dark side, so I slid out and began an urgent pee.”

“The Kombi suddenly started up and drove off, exposing me – literally – to a Police car parked on the other side of the Kombi!”

“I still don’t know who was driving!!”

ENDS

Thanks Ric for sharing your images & stories..and special thanks to Errol for putting the blog together and making it happen.

Related content:

Photo Gallery of Greg Laurenson images by Ric Syme published 5 Sep 2020

—————————————-