David Pu’u is a man who follows his dream, makes a living from it, and gets to travel the world in the process.

Pu’u has been a competitive surfer, switched careers some years ago, and now has international standing as a surf still photographer and filmmaker. His professional life, he said this week in an interview, is "creative and also cathartic."

His surf, ocean and celebrity photographs appear in surfer magazines and other periodicals, including Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, Playboy, Time and — closer to home — the Voice’s sister publication, BlueEdge Magazine.

Raised in Goleta, Pu’u studied art and journalism at Santa Barbara City College. He is now based in Ventura, from where he literally travels the world, with an emphasis on the South Pacific.

An alumnus of Dos Pueblos High School, Pu’u trained for Olympic bicycling. A surfer since the age of 11, he made the jump to the pro surfing tour around 1977, when he was 19 years old. "My dad’s Hawaiian, and he threw me in the ocean when I was four," Pu’u said. "I started out riding air mattresses because that’s all we had."

He still surfs regularly, but declines to choose a favorite spot. "Everything in Santa Barbara is good in winter," he said, "and then we go elsewhere."

The "elsewhere" covers a lot of ground. He recently returned from a photo shoot in Maui, where "I shot 70 rolls of film and now I’m putting in 18-hour days developing it," he said.
Pu’u is preparing to leave soon for Northern California, to shoot the big surf at Mavericks. "Then it’s back to Oahu and then to the Big Island. In February, I’m going to the Philippines. And I have to go to Fiji." Then, with a laugh, he said, "I’m either getting ready to travel, or I’m traveling, or I’m recovering from traveling."

At the time Pu’u was making the transition from pro surfing to photography, he went through the pain of a divorce. "It was cathartic, when I was going through a bad time," he said. Pu’u has two sons, Joshua, who will be 19 in January, and Jonathan, who turns 17 the same month.

In spite of his peripatetic schedule, Pu’u added, "It’s amazing. I’ve managed to get a girlfriend." The woman, Donna Von Hoesslin, has a surfer fashion accessory business in Bali, he said. Bali is one of his frequent South Pacific travel destinations.

Pu’u shoots with 35 mm. cameras and fast, high-resolution film. He shoots from in the water.

"I’m really confident swimming," he said. "I tread water and shoot. I try and get innovative angles. I imagine it’s like bullfighting or playing tag with a semi on the freeway. It’s really a lot of fun."

Whatever the entertaining aspects of still photography, Pu’u is expanding his attention to a different field — motion pictures.

"Starting in 1998, I began studying other types of motion pictures and stills," he said. "It’s two different forms of communication. Motion pictures are more complicated. Part of me likes stills, part of me likes motion pictures."

Since surf photography is his forte, Pu’u said he especially admires the films of Bruce Brown. "He’s a good model for surf journalism," he said, "from the beginning and right through ‘Endless Summer’." Pu’u said he also liked last summer’s big surfing hit, "Riding Giants" and its director, Sam George.

For motion pictures, he shoots with a 16 mm camera. "It goes from real time to 18X, extreme slow motion," he said. His choices in motion equipment are Canon and Panasonic.

"I have an editor, Rob DaFoe. He’s first camera operator and also edits. I’m also working with Tyler Swain, a producer at MTV. The three of us are making a motion picture, a dramatic documentary. It’s seven short stories, set all around the world. We’ve been shooting it for a year or so.

"The equipment is made to my specifications," he said. In addition to shooting while swimming, he works from a Jet Ski, an airplane or a boat.

While still wed to the 35 mm still camera, Pu’u said he is thinking about digital cameras. "I’m digitally trained," he said. "I do all my images filmed with Canon non-digital equipment. I see that changing, in the next couple of years."

The drawback to digital is that "one computer glitch and you lose your information," he said. "We’ll use it some in the future. I don’t need to look to see what I’ve shot. It kind of flows."

With digital, however, "you can show an art director what you’ve got. They like to see it."
Recalling his teenage years, Pu’u laughed and said, "I just remember Goleta when it was all fields. It was really nice."

And in spite of being built up over the years, he added, "It hasn’t turned out too bad."

Photo by David Pu’u

Caption: An ocean wave at sunset shows a glorious burst of spray against a golden sky, characteristic of Dos Pueblos alumnus David Pu’u’s photographs.