Wilding Fifty: Surf Tales
Wilding Fifty: Surf Tales
What makes you thrive with Heather Moreau
In this episode with Heather Moreau we discuss her adventures with shooting international destination weddings, becoming the master of your own time as an entrepreneur, putting systems in place to get your trail running, backpacking, surfing, snowboarding, and yoga in, and weaving a family culture in the great outdoors. Come with me as we delve into Heather’s rich and meaningful life.
Highlights:
[00:00] Life as a professional photographer and entrepreneur
[12:27] Fine art photography
[13:29] Doing it all
[15:26] Motherhood and surfing
[17:18] A passion for longboarding
[17:56] Numb chins and hands: surfing in December
[21:35] Creating systems for success
[22:52] Her history of surfing
[27:04] Creating a family culture of surfing
Quotes by Heather:
"It takes a lot of deep thought and planning about what you want out of life and what’s important to you. What are your values and where do you want to spend your time? Because it’s so easy for time to just be frittered away with things that aren’t necessarily important to you. So, taking the time to think, what are my values, what are the things that make me thrive? What are the things that make me so happy and just trying to fit them all in."
"We have two boys. We want to introduce them to surfing because we think it's such a beautiful thing in the world. If you learn to surf young enough it becomes something that you can go do anytime. It's an escape. It's a built-in community. It's connecting with nature. It's having respect for the ocean. It's noticing the patterns in nature, through the seasons of winter and summer. I want my kids to have that. I want them to deeply understand that."
"I decided, this is it. I don't want to go to an office every day. I wanna work for myself. I want to be my own boss. I want to achieve and accomplish all of the types of photography that I've always loved."
Get in touch with Heather
More about Christine Foerster
- christinefoerster.com
- Instagram @christinefoerster
Christine: Hi Heather
Heather: How’s it going?
Christine: Great to have you here.
Heather: Thanks for having me
Christine: You’re a photographer by profession and I was mesmerized looking at the photos on your website. I really think it’s something to be proud of.
Heather: Thank you.
Christine: You capture these beautiful moments of family portraits, babies, weddings, but then I also see this really careful consideration of the natural world in your photographs.
Heather: Yeah, definitely. I photograph weddings and family portraits. I have been doing photography for over 20 years now, and I definitely think that the natural world is a big part of what I shoot. I'm always shooting on location, so the natural environment comes into play a lot. Even when I'm planning my sessions, I need to take into consideration the light direction. Where the sun is setting, and that depends on what time of year it is. What trees are blooming, where I'll get my shade from. So it's a really interesting play between nature and photography when you're shooting in natural environments. I always think that's a really great part of my work is that I get to go to the same natural environments year after year, season after season. And they're always changing. They're always a little bit different. The light looks a little bit different. The shadows are in different places, and it’s something that you would never think was such a big part of photography, but it really is.
Christine: Well, light is everything. It sounds a little bit like the impressionists. Where they'll look at the same haystack in morning, noon, night and see how it changes. Because of the plays of light and how that changes the reflections of color.
Heather: It's true. I'm always telling people, look at the light today, and I don't think they know what I'm talking about half the time, but it's something that I can't help and notice.
Christine: You said that you started this journey in photography when you were invited to work in Surfer Girl right in San Clemente.
Heather: Yeah. a small magazine close to when I finished my Bachelors. I was taking a little break between my bachelors and my master's degree, and I went to intern at Surfing Girl Magazine, which was in San Clemente back then.This was over 20 years ago. I was an intern at Surfing and Surfing Goal Magazine. And I helped with everything. I did whatever they asked me, all the grunt work and one of the things I would help with was the editorial fashion shoots. We would hire the photographers. Pick the models, get the locations, do the storyboarding, plan everything out to the last detail of how each shot was going to look and how we wanted everything to be laid out. I think that was my first introduction to professional photography, it was something that I had always loved. I was one of those people that always had a camera in high school at parties, and I have lots of incriminating photos from back then. But it was never something that I thought, you could do as a career.
Heather: I had never considered it. So when I really saw the professional aspect of a working photographer, and all of their travels, honestly it looked so glamorous to travel to all of these different locations and work with models and produce work that was published all over the world. It enchanted me and I decided that I wanted to learn to do it. I got to meet a lot of great photographers, amazing talented people in the surf world, in the fashion world. And I worked as an assistant and did all the grunt work and followed them around, carrying their bags and just learning everything I could.
Christine: The other side of being a photographer is that you are also an entrepreneur. I'm thinking about people right now that are listening and they’re passionate about a craft that they practice or they have this idea for a business. So, what ideas could you give for those first steps or launching into that entrepreneurial world, what advice could you give?
Heather: Don't do it. No, no. I'm just kidding. I started off working as assistants for different photographers in the surf world. I worked for Surfing Girl. I was an assistant for Aaron Czech Wood at Trans. Surf. I went over to DC and I was shooting commercially in their studio shooting catalogs on medium format. So lots of different experiences, and eventually, I started assisting doing weddings and I decided, this is it. I don't want to go to an office every day. I wanna work for myself. I wanna be my own boss. And I want to achieve and accomplish all of the types of photography that I've always loved. So I quit my job at DC, I think that was the last job I ever had. And, pure fear, complete, time to pay the rent and make this happen.
Christine: You didn't do a side hustle, you basically just quit and went for it.
Heather: I just 100% went for it. And it was terrifying. I would work 16 hours a day in the third bedroom of our house. I would roll out of bed at five o'clock in the morning in my pajamas and stumble across the hallway and start editing and working and marketing and pounding the pavement essentially, and shooting for free and getting my name out there, self-promotion. I had no experience in any of this stuff, but I had bills to pay and I needed to make it happen, or else I was gonna have to go get a job again, which sounded really terrible.
Christine: It is something when you understand what it means to the master of your own time. I don't know that everybody wants that.
Heather: I can see both sides.
Christine: Because you are working from home. I work from home as well. You have to make that good boundary between your home life and your work life. But at the same time, I always feel so grateful that everything is here. Whenever I need to work, I just go into the garage and I have my studio.
Heather: Yeah. I mean it has its pluses and minuses. What is it that people say you quit your nine to five to work 24 7.
Christine: Does it feel like mostly play to you or does it still feel there's a lot real work.
Heather: There's a lot of real work. Definitely running a business, marketing contracting, client correspondence, editing thousands and thousands of photos, my audiobook time, it's a lot of real work. But then there are those beautiful moments that happen all the time where I'm in a place that I would never have gotten to see if I wasn't a photographer. I get to see some really amazing events and travel to great places and honestly just meet people from walks of life and get an inside view of their family and their social structure that is completely different from the way I'm living and completely different from any of my friends. I think it's a beautiful thing to just know that there are so many people out there that are doing things their own way and it's enlightening. I absolutely love it when I get to learn about the way other people are living their lives.
Christine: Can you give us an example of maybe the most interesting destination wedding, or an example of being plunged into something very different?
Heather: So, these days since I've had my own kids, I don't shoot as many destination weddings, but I have gotten a lot of great ones over the years. I did one in Peru where we climbed the top of Machu Picchu. I did that with a couple. I shot their wedding in Lima and then traveled with them all over the country for 10 days. We got to the very top of Machu Picchu and it was a really cloudy day. And as we climbed up to the peak of that mountain where all the ruins are. It was cloudy, but the sun broke through and it was shining on the ruins right there, and it was incredible to see that there is this place that is just lost in time, that's just sitting up there at every moment when we're in our cars or we're surfing, it's still there. That was a completely eye-opening, amazing experience. Another one of my favorite weddings ever was a couple who rented a private island in The Bahamas. There was no one else on the island but the wedding guests and we got free roam of the island to go shoot.
Christine: They are quite lucky to have you with them then too. Cause not only is it the wedding, but it sounds like all of the preparation and then the after travels, what a neat arrangement.
Heather: I feel so grateful and blessed that they even found me just by chance. All of those wonderful events came, I don't even know how I got that job.
Christine: It was those 16 hours that you put in in the early days.
Heather: It was. Sure it was beating the pavement in the early days. But, I think that it takes a certain type of photographer who wants to go travel. It's a lot of work traveling with all your gear. It's not a vacation, even though they're amazing memories. It's certainly not a vacation. A wedding I did last year was up in Mammoth. We shot the wedding at Convict Lake and then the couple, they were snowboarders, so it turned out to be the perfect fit between photographer and client. I'm a snowboarder. I have an icon passed to Mammoth. I know that mountain really well, and so did they. So we had them put on their wedding clothes and we took the lift up to the top of Mammoth and we snowboarded all over that mountain together. I would get to a good location and find the right light. And then, there they were coming down the mountain in a wedding dress.
Christine: Wow. Like Jimmy Chin.
Heather: But it's amazing, cuz all of these things I would never get to without this career.
Christine: That is so interesting. Well, good for you for finding that for yourself. You mentioned the other day that you're moving into possibly fine art photography.
Heather: Sure, I think that's more of a hope rather than something that I'm actually doing yet. But, whenever I'm shooting with a family or a couple. I'm always shooting fine art at the same time. I love landscape photography. I love negative space. I love nature and light, and I love birds, so that is something that I'm photographing all the time, especially seabird and birds in flight. I have a pretty big collection of work in fine art. I hope I can use it somehow. I haven't exactly found how that's gonna work yet, but I feel like it'll fall in place eventually.
Christine: The show notes will link, Valentine Photography, and then do you have some of those examples of fine art there? I didn't really see that on the website.
Heather: It's on a website called Heather Ryan Images. Valentine is my maiden name. And Ryan is my middle name.
Christine: I wanted to switch gears a little bit. In addition to surfing, you are also a dedicated swimmer and runner and yoga practitioner where we know each other from and I was would love it if you could talk a little bit about how you weave in all of these activities on top of being an entrepreneur and photographer? And, then what do they do for you?
Heather: Well, I wish I could weave them all in every day, and I think that's one of the biggest challenges for me. My husband, he's a surfer and a snowboarder. Those are his things, and I feel like I'm much more scattered than that. I love running, I love swimming. I love surfing, snowboarding, hiking. I'm always trying to figure out how to fit them all in. When we surfed yesterday, that was so much fun. And that made me realize I need to get in the water more often. But then you'll go on an amazing trail run and I'm like, I need to get to the mountains more often. And then you'll go to yoga and it's such a beautiful practice and it feels so good. And I need to go to yoga every day. I think that's my life. I guess at the end of the day, I do things a bit seasonally. In the winter, I love to be in hot yoga, I naturally run cold, so I really like to get in there to thaw. It just feels so good.
Heather: When spring rolls around, you probably will find me more in the mountains, trail running and hiking and backpacking. I did a big backpacking trip this last year from Mammoth to Yosemite, and now I'm hooked on getting out there and really backpacking. So as my kids get older, I hope to do that more. Surfing is something that I do all year round, whenever I can get out there and have enough time. It's interesting, as my kids get older, I'm finding more and more time to be able to surf. I started surfing when I was 15. I surfed a lot. I met my husband surfing, we had our first date surfing and we traveled all over going on surf trips and that was really our thing. But when I became a mom, I found that I had to dial back a lot of those things. And that's only natural, perfectly fine. It's an absolutely beautiful time of life, but it's a time of life where you're focusing on your kids, so naturally it's taken the backseat a little bit, which now that I'm getting a little older and they're getting older, it’s really awesome that I can get out there again and also they can get out there with me, which is a lot of fun.
Christine: Did you tell me that you used to ride much bigger waves, but you've become more cautious?
Heather: As my surfing progressed in my early, mid twenties, we would go to Mexico and we'd go to Costa Rica and Hawaii and Puerto Rico and travel around and surf bigger waves. My husband, I think he's a really great surfer and he's really inspiring. He's a shortboarder though, and I'm a longboarder, so our wave choice is a little bit different at times. But, just traveling with him. I was surfing a lot bigger waves that were head high, a few feet overhead, and feeling comfortable in those kinds of conditions. I think because I was training for it more, I was surfing every day. I don't think you can really surf as well when you go out and surf once a week.
Christine: And you have always been a long boarder?
Heather: I've always been a long boarder. I do notice. A lot of people start surfing and they just wanna go shorter, and their idea of advancing is to go shorter. For me, I just have always loved the beauty and grace of longboarding. I think it's the epitome of what surfing is, to be out there on a beautiful day and just cruising down the wave with just beautiful long turns. So yeah, that's what works for me. That's what I love.
Christine: Great. And I got to watch you surf the other day. It was really fun. Let's talk about our surf session. I hadn't been in the water after being pretty consistent about it. I hadn't been in the water for almost three weeks. I had gone to New York for Thanksgiving and then I got Covid on the way back. So it was really nice to get in the water with you. It felt so different though because we experienced this warm water September, October, even November felt fine, and then all of a sudden getting back in December. It was a chilly morning, and I remember walking to the beach and my feet were halfway frozen. The water itself didn't feel so bad, but by the time we were in the water for about an hour or a little more together, and by the time I got out, my hands were so numb that I couldn't even open the car lock on my door. I had to get a big rock and jimmy had open
Heather: Yes. It's something else. It is cold. And it's funnily enough, that's usually when I have the most time of surf to surf is in the winter.
Christine: But it was unbelievable. I don't think the forecast was all that great.
I think there were four other people besides us in the lineup. And the waves were actually lovely.
Heather: They were really good. I was looking around. People are missing out.
Christine: Yeah. It was something and so beautiful, we saw so many pelicans. flying over. And, the tide was really nice too. The way the waves were forming. It was a really nice moment to be out there and it made me think, gosh, maybe I'll become a winter surfer. Maybe I'll find this is my favorite time of year because it's so pleasant and quiet.
Heather: Less crowded. Just gorgeous conditions and yeah, the pelicans skimming the surface of the water is so beautiful. But yes, it was cold. After about an hour, my chin was numb and I couldn't really talk anymore.
Christine: I actually want to weave this back to photography because I imagine you have such a trained eye that you probably are very good at picking small details, and you have probably a very keen sense of observation. I'm curious what that feels like for you when you're out in the water.
Heather: I mean, I don't know how it is for other people, but for me I'm always noticing the light, that is something that affects me a lot. It’s so impactful. It's so beautiful. I feel so much gratitude when I get to be out there. Most of the things that I like to do have to do with nature. It has to do with getting away, going out and backpacking, going out snowboarding, going trail running. But surfing is one of the few things that we can literally drive 10 minutes to the beach, park your car, and you are only about 50 feet away from your car, but you feel like you're completely immersed in nature and you can just get away from it at all, you feel like you're out there just completely relaxed..
Christine: Especially in Southern California where there is a lot of development all the way to the coastline. Once you get up in the ocean, you don't notice it. You feel that open expansion.
Heather: Yeah. You don't look back there anymore. You're only looking out towards the horizon. And it gives me the solitude that I crave and the peace and quiet. That little break in your day is so nice.
Christine: I was struck cuz you've mentioned to me in various conversations that you run a little bit cold. That you don't like cold weather and cold things and yet, and you call yourself a fair weather surfer. And yet you're surfing year round. But you told me, what you like to do is to have all of your gear and things at the ready and probably visible. So that's one of your tricks, right? To keep yourself motivated?
Heather: I think with any sport you have to have a good system for it. So with surfing, especially cold weather surfing, you have to have your wetsuit and booties and whatever else you use and your board and everything ready to go. Even camping can feel really overwhelming if you don't have a system. I think any sport is nice for that. With yoga, I keep my mat in the car, so I'm literally ready to go to grab a towel and some water.
Christine: I know. I keep mine by my bed because I roll out of bed in the morning and the first thing I do is a 10 minute stretch, just to start the day. And it's wild, when you put those things in your way they really become so habitual that you can’t go on without it, you feel like you'll miss it.
Heather: I think there's a lot of things that we just won't do if there's too much thinking involved. So creating little systems to get yourself going and, like Steve Jobs, he only had five outfits. Yeah. He took out that whole thinking part that we don't need to do.
Christine: Right. All that wasted mental energy. You've mentioned briefly your history with surfing, but I would love it if you could go back a little bit. You mentioned your grandmother having a house at the Rock in Oceanside. That's where you started, because you would visit your grandmother and you would have the ocean right there, in your backyard.
Heather: Pretty much. I started surfing when I was about 15. My grandma lived right at the Rock, which is just south of Oceanside Boulevard, and I didn't live far from there. I lived off Oceanside Boulevard too. I grew up in Oceanside, but me and my mom would go up to my grandma's house all the time. We'd sit and watch the waves and the surfers, and she had one of those great little private beaches that's like the elevated rock area. That's where we would have Thanksgiving dinner every year. I grew up there and watching all the surfers, and I think I started developing a curiosity for it maybe in junior high. But I didn't have any siblings and my mom was not athletic and didn't do anything like that, so I didn't really have anyone around me that surfed. I was just curious about what they were doing out there. It looked like so much fun and I really wanted to try it, but had no idea how.
Christine: There wasn't a surfing culture in your family, but it was just the location. The location was on your side.
Heather: Yeah, I guess so. Being at the beach all the time, I just always really wanted to try it. My mom finally after, begging her to let me try it out, she got me, I think it was a 7’6” a really beater old board and wetsuit from a garage sale, super crusty wetsuit. I mean, it was salty and cracking at the edges. But, that was my first board and wetsuit and I would just paddle out there and try not to look like a kook! I was pretty much just trying to get to the outside for the longest time, cuz that's the biggest challenge for a beginner. I would catch some whitewash waves and finally would make it to the outside and then I would sit there petrified. I learned on my own, and then eventually, I started meeting friends that were surfing and developing a group of people to go with who you can learn from and talk to and ask questions. But it was all very organic and it started off slow and I would just go when I could go, when I had time away from school. My mom really didn't understand why I would want to go get out in that freezing cold water and do that, but she was supportive and it was good that my grandma lived there cuz she could just drop me off.
Christine: What do you think was the biggest challenge of learning to surf? Or let's say, let's imagine the moment when you can paddle out and then you are actually beginning to catch some of those waves.
Heather: I think the biggest challenge for me learning was not having a community or a teacher. I think a lot of people grow up and their dad surfs or their, maybe their mom surfs. They grew up in an environment where it's more natural that they would go surfing. So, I just had to learn on my own and look at magazines, which were completely unattainable. Things over the years have gotten a bit friendlier with surfing. When I started surfing it was definitely a very closed club, especially if you didn't know anybody. But luckily I've always been very determined and don't let that stand in my way. But I think those are probably the biggest things but, there was just enough little nuggets of reward in there that just made me wanna come back for more.
Christine: You talk a lot about your family life.That you guys spend a lot of time at the beach, your husband being a shaper of surfboards. It seems like it's very woven and integral to your family culture.
Heather: Well, my husband and I, we met through mutual friends that all surfed. Our first date was surfing. Actually, a funny story for you. On our first date, I caught a wave and fell and the board hit me in the face and split open like the side of my eye. Under my eyebrow, and he had to take me to the hospital to get stitches. So that's what we ended up doing on our first date. And at the hospital here I am dripping, wet and sandy, the doctor actually thought it was domestic abuse.
Christine: Oh really?
Heather: It was so embarrassing.
Christine: This is the first date!
Heather: Yes, exactly. So, luckily we moved past that but yeah, our family. Doug, my husband, we've always been into the outdoors, especially surfing and snowboarding. That's a huge part of our lives. And we have two boys. We want to introduce that to them because we think it's such a beautiful thing in the world. If you learn to surf young enough and it just becomes a thing that you can go do anytime, it's an escape. It's a built-in community. It's connecting with nature. It's having respect for the ocean. It's noticing the patterns in nature, through the seasons of winter and summer. And I want my kids to have that. I want them to deeply understand that. So, obviously they're 10 and 12, that'll take some time. But, my 12 year old loves to get out in the water a lot. My 10 year old is still a bit more of an artist, but I just, I love spending time at the beach with us. Family surf sessions are the best ever. It’s so nice seeing your kids catching a wave and now my 12 year old catches more waves than I do.
Christine: Yeah, it’s great Heather. I see you as somebody who has a passion through photography and you have this really nice way in which you have seamed together all of the things in your life and you weave it through your family life, your professional career. I’m not saying it hasn’t been a lot of hard work but it’s something to admire. Because I think you can lead a life where things feel disparate and not quite on track. But it seems like you really built a tapestry or a full picture…
Heather: Thank you so much. I think it takes a lot of deep thought and planning about what you want out of life and what’s important to you. What are your values and where do you want to spend your time? Because it’s so easy for time to just be frittered away with things that aren’t necessarily important to you. So, taking the time to think, what are my values, what are the things that make me thrive? What are the things that make me so happy and just trying to fit them all in.
Christine: Great, well thank you for taking the time today.
Heather: Thank you
Christine: It was really fun to go surfing with you.
Heather: It was really fun, yes! I feel freshly inspired every time.
Christine: Me too.
