Autobiography
I’ve been a “so-called” professional for over 33 years, something I have had time to enjoy and reflect on for the past few years as I have been compiling a collection of my life’s work. At nearly 60 years old, this will probably be my last effort. I am truly grateful for the opportunities I’ve obtained and for the life I have led. I always wanted to give something back to the ocean that I loved so deeply. The Bolster Collection is my gift and my life.
I was born Jack Wayne Stevens on June 11, 1947 and was adopted by Edward and Elizabeth Bolster in February of the following year. It turned out that I was one lucky baby. Not only did I have great parents but my father was a State Department diplomat and as such we would get a chance to see the world.
Growing up in the Washington, D.C. we occasionally got to the beaches along the Chesapeake Bay, and Virginia where as early as 1957 I was riding an air mat. Later that year while visiting Hawaii on our way to a new post in Tokyo, I discovered not only the beauty of Hawaii, and its clear water but saw my first surfing in person. The surfing bug and love for the ocean hit me big time.
After my first year in high school, my father got an assignment as Consul General in Australia where my apprenticeship as a young surfer began in earnest. I had been a good dancer, runner and ball player, but once I started surfing it was only learning to dance on waves that interested me. Like so many others; I was instantly hooked.
I HAD to record this beautiful experience. I began putting all my father’s hand-me-down camera’s to use, but with their short lenses I could only race down to the shorebreak, quickly snap a shot, and race back up the beach. As I learned to surf, I eventually started paddling out with a camera strap in my teeth all while trying to keep the camera dry. They would become just the first of many camera’s I was to lose over the next 4 decades.
When my fathers assignment was up we made our way back home. I remember flying into Dulles Airport, Arlington, Virginia in an aloha shirt and aloha tennis shoes - into the snow! It was a miserable year finishing high school, “being the only surfer boy in town” as an old song goes.
Graduating from high school, I sought-out a Jr. College in Cocoa Beach, Florida eventually becoming #1 in my division on the East Coast and making the then famous traveling Hobie, and later, Weber Surf Teams. But the small waves and water clarity, on the East Coast left a lot to be desired so a year later I moved to San Diego, California. It was like finding heaven on earth - kelp glassy surf everywhere, and relatively clear water. Right from the start, things began happening fast. I had a basic water housing, and almost immediately I had two cover shots from the water and many other photo’s inside. Within one or two issues I was a “contributing editor” and shooting everywhere I could. I was living a dream come true - in the ocean.
I got picked up by SURFER MAGAZINE as an Associate Editor. Ad sales Boosting my income and I began being treated as I’d always dreamed. As a senior photographer, too, I had a chance to still do what I was learning quickly was my dream come true – photography of all the visual extremities of the lifestyle of surfing that I loved so much.
I began waking up at 2 or 3 a.m., driving from my new home in Cardiff, North County, San Diego, to the Dana Point offices of SURFER and on to Laguna Beach to the north to go shoot the empty sunrises from inside the tube.
By 1975 skateboarding was becoming a huge part of me life. Surfer had asked me to restart Skateboarder Magazine and SKATEBOARDER quickly grew to 3X the size of my truest love, SURFER. I loved the similarities of surfing and skateboarding but the time it took to do it all took a heavy toll on me.
I still found time to make it to Hawaii, winter and summer, by working 18-hour days, 7 day weeks and basically telling surfer’s and skater’s that they could call me 24 hours
a day.
Surfing and the mysteries of the ocean were my true love and I continued to put as much time as I could into it. By now the Pro Surfing Tour was in its second year and it’s organizer, Randy Rarick, invited me to enter. I worked my way as far as the quarter finals in one event losing by ½ a point to the next year’s World Champ, Rabbit Bartholomew. When the year end ratings came out, I was rated 45th in the world.
By 1980, I lost count of my worldwide cover shots - it was over 600 and I had written hundreds of articles for Surfing, Surfer and many others. As a successful water photographer since 1972, wave photos in all their perspectives and situations have been my main focus. To this end, I’ve gone from land to water shots, to pioneering helicopter shots (since 1976), to accessing critical wave locations throughout the South Pacific from boats with gyro-stabilizers to remote camera boards and over under photos.
For the past 10 years, I’ve had the pleasure to spend a lot of time in a very magical place, Tavarua Island, Fiji. I have had time to develop my remote control camera board and to photograph beautiful empty waves. Waves unlike people are timeless. I’ve used two, large, specialized water-housings to shoot over/under photos, which allow you to see both above and below the surface in focus. To dissect a hollow wave like a slice of pie is just one of my dedications. Focusing above (over) and beneath (under), in focus, is a skill that is so hard as to be ridiculous.
As Tina Turner said in a song intro - and is especially true for me.
“I never do anything nice and easy”.
I will leave you with a quote.
“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary”
–David Bailey, 1938
Thank you for your time
Aloha
Warren
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