Water and light ray collins

Ray collins surf photography
Ocean wave photography
Australian ocean photographer

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I'm Ray Collins, an ocean photographer from Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. My deep passion for the ocean and my desire to showcase its awe-inspiring power and delicate fragility drive my work.

My journey into photography began unexpectedly in 2007 when a tragic underground coal mining accident left me with a knee injury, rendering me immobile for several months. During that challenging time, I discovered photography as a form of therapy. Immersed in the camera manual, I absorbed the intricacies of the craft and learned how to interpret and manipulate light. As I progressed in my rehabilitation, I took a leap and invested in a water housing, blending my newfound passion for photography with my lifelong love for the ocean.

Initially, my goal was to capture my friends' surfing moments in our local area, with the dream of getting a single photograph published. However, within a few months, my fresh perspective and my willingness to take risks to capture the perfect shot grabbed the attention of the surfing world. The front covers of international magazines featured my wor

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Ray Collins

Ray Collins feels privileged to have spent more than 35 years as “part of an industry I love: I can’t think of a single career I’d choose over mine. I was very lucky to know from such an early age what I wanted to do. From there, it was just a matter of acquiring some skills and waiting for opportunity to knock. I’m extremely fortunate it did.”

Collins' path to becoming a cameraman began early, thanks to experiments with an old Russian-made 8mm camera and movie projector that his father had traded for some carpentry work.

In his teens, Collins emigrated from hometown Luton (50 kilometres from London) to New Zealand. He was working in a Hamilton camera shop when senior BCNZ cameraman Dave Drinkwater, impressed by his photographs, offered Collins a job as a television cameraman on the spot. He was shooting items for the main evening news his first morning on the job.

Based in Wellington and Dunedin for much of the 15 years Collins spent with the state broadcaster, he honed his craft skills working on news and current affairs in Wellingto

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Ray Collins

The sublime waves in Ray Collins’ photographs appear like towering mountain ranges rising up from the sea. Collins seems to freeze the water, capturing waves in the instant just before their imminent break, thus creating a unique interplay between shapes and contrasts. He sits or lies on his surfboard in wait of the perfect moment of rushing water.

Through immediate proximity to the subject, the Australian photographer creates a form of abstraction that leads us to forget that these are pictures of ocean waves. Although the water is clearly recognizable, the waves form portraits of themselves. Shafts of light shimmer in countless nuances, bordering the wave, flooding it with glistening light, or piercing it.

Ray Collins turned his passion into a profession. After getting his start in surf photography, he began to focus more and more on photographing the waves themselves. Collins quickly became an internationally in-demand photographer. His works have an unusual tension because they leave everything unresolved, capturing the second right before the tumultuous cras