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Surf culture in New Jersey, like most places on the East Coast, thrives on celebrating hardcore locals and denigrating itinerant visitors. Shoobies. Bennies. Kooks. Invaders. Anyone who’s rocked up to 7th Street or Casino Pier or Manasquan Inlet with out-of-state plates knows the drill: absorb the abuse, quietly try and impress the locals, and maybe, after a few years of toeing the line, you might just be grudgingly accepted by the lifelong beachside crowd.
But there are no guarantees in the tight-knit and notoriously tough-as-nails Garden State scene. And if there’s one facet of that singular subculture where salt-stained blood runs even thicker, it’s surf photography. Seaside Heights kingpin Ray Hallgreen spent years downplaying his Trenton roots and hours shooting the crew around Grog’s Surf Palace before he was fully inducted into the club. And Dick Meseroll, perhaps the most famous first-generation photog to ever emerge from New Jersey, took more than his fair share of licks at Jenks before even considering whether he had what it takes.
So why is 36-year-old Rich McMullin, who grew up in Philadelphia and Cherry Hill and still lives just five minutes over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, one of New Jersey’s most well-respected surf shooters? Two words: passion and professionalism, a potent combo that has taken the 15-year Collingswood resident and turned him into the principal photographer for recent Garden State epic Dark Fall. The only person under 55 to exhibit at this summer’s Singlefins, Boardwalks, and Story Talks New Jersey Surf History exhibition in Tuckerton. And the most dialed-in choice of documentarian for everyone from Andrew Gesler to Kevin Morris to the Kelly brothers to Luke Ditella.
Like so many inlanders, Rich spent his childhood summers in Sea Isle City, where he first tested Atlantic waters bodyboarding as a grom. By age 13, he and his friends had started surfing, and in high school, he first discovered the allure of photography. But this is where Rich’s story deviates, because he didn’t undergo the usual teenaged evolution from ripping surfer to exclusive surf photographer. “When I started shooting around 1989 or ‘90, it was more of a hobby to document my friends and I skateboarding and BMXing,” he says. “But that’s what everybody was doing growing up, especially for anyone who was at least an hour from the beach.”
Rich’s high school photo classes enamored him to the darkroom, but when he started community college, he hit a proverbial wall. “I wasn’t stoked on photography then, because I had to start over from scratch,” he remembers. “I had three or four years under my belt, and I went into an environment where I had to go back to square one. That bored me.” Rich then spent his early 20s “floundering around,” moving to California for a summer, working menial jobs to pay rent, and trying to surf as much as possible. But a friend who worked at Hone Studio, an acclaimed food photography fixture in Philly, soon called with a temporary second assistant opening. “She said, ‘Hey, this could be a good opportunity for you to get your foot in the door,’” Rich says. “So I rolled the dice — I actually had to quit two of my other jobs to do the three-week stint. But they took a liking to me and I got hired, I think because I was used to hustling to make money and had a good work ethic.”
Rich says the studio gig was his own version of a dream job. “It was a fucking cakewalk,” he laughs. “It wasn’t hard labor, cutting grass or landscaping in the summer. And realizing that I could make a living at it really got me excited about photography again, because it pushed me to learn the skills.” Rich’s five-year tenure under Stephen Hone also broadened his technical and aesthetic horizons. “It’s nice to have somebody to apprentice under, because you can learn a lot from them, even if you don’t particularly like the way they do things,” Rich says. “I got a good education in how to shoot in a studio correctly. A lot of photographers are fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, and in surfing you have to be that way, but I appreciate controlled chaos.”
Working in the studio from 1998 to 2003 also gave Rich valuable hands-on experience with the rapidly changing digital world. “I’m really fortunate that I got in on the ground floor of digital,” he says. “That was one of the greatest things I had going for me, working for a guy who was pushing and pioneering that technology.” The only bad part of his half-decade at Hone came in the form of 60- to 80-hour workweeks, which forced Rich to neglect his surfing. “I didn’t have time to go to the beach and I barely shot anything while I was working there,” he says. “I was basically a weekend surfer if I was lucky.” So after five years of the workaday grind, Rich scaled back to mostly freelance jobs, allowing him to return to his true passion: shooting surf photos and stoking out his friends. “Once I started surfing a lot again, I dabbled more in shooting before and after sessions,” he says. “I was getting some OK images, and Kevin Morris started pushing me. Since he worked at Heritage Surf & Sport, and I knew Brian Heritage from growing up in Sea Isle City, they supported me by keeping me dialed in with their teamriders and eventually asking me to go on trips. They’ve been my biggest proponents over the years.”
Beyond the deep South Jersey talent pool studded with names like Randazzo, Keenan, and Humphreys, McMullin started inching his way north around 2005, showing up on Long Beach Island to shoot Ben McBrien and Randy Townsend and quickly learning the highly competitive surf photo ropes. “Shooting with talent is how you’re going to get recognized and get things published,” Rich says. “A lot of my friends were good, but I realized that you had to go find the guys that the companies wanted to see in the mags.” Rich’s first big push also coincided with the purchase of his first waterhousing. “I knew from the get-go that I wanted to get in the water and shoot,” he says. “You have to push yourself, though, because it’s a big step. But I recognized the need to diversify; nobody wants to go on a trip and only get land shots. As a photographer, I want to tell a story that’s well-rounded, and having that water shot makes things that much cooler.”
With professional skills learned in the studio and a burgeoning contact list of willing New Jersey shredders, McMullin was well on his way. He filled his passport with stamps from Barbados, France, Mexico, Canada, and Indonesia, interspersing those international jaunts with quick strikes to Puerto Rico, California, and up and down the East Coast. When he took non-surf trips to places like Ireland and Peru, he spent his free time scouting out setups and exploring future potential. And by 2007, he was ready to give surf photography his undivided attention. “I’ve always been a late bloomer throughout life, so I really didn’t push it hard until the middle of ’07,” he says. “But that was probably the worst time — all the mags were cutting back, ad budgets were getting slashed, and there was no way to make money. At the same time, it was one of the best things I ever did, because I started getting recognized and making friendships outside of New Jersey.”
But as any Garden State native will tell you, it’s impossible to forget your roots. Younger than the first generation of shooters like Mez and Hallgreen but older and more experienced than most of the surfers he was following around, Rich easily slid into position as one of the state’s top lensmen. “It’s cool to be in the middle and shooting both ends of the spectrum,” he says. “I’ve got at least 10 years on most of the guys I’m shooting — people outside the surfing world think it’s weird, because I look like a molester on my Facebook page with so many 17- to 20-year-old friends. But that’s the cool thing about it, especially here in Jersey — surfing transcends generations.”
Yet after only two years spent pursuing surf photography full throttle, Rich found himself nearly broke and with a bad taste developing in his mouth. “From an advertising standpoint, surfing is the cheapest industry I’ve ever worked in,” he says. “Last year was a pretty dark time — I basically didn’t work for six months. But I was surfing and shooting a lot, and it forced me to stay home during one of our best winters. We were wrapping up Dark Fall with some of those full-on gnarly blizzard swells, and the best thing was deciding that I wasn’t going to worry about making a living at surf photography anymore. Over the last six to eight months, I’ve gone back to the mentality of getting enjoyment from shooting my friends and stoking them out. It’s the same thing that draws anybody to surfing to begin with: you’re not looking to make a living off of it.”
Today, Rich is busy pursuing commercial photography again, shooting celebrities and fashion, melding his water skills with advertisers looking for pool or swimming-related work, and serving as a digital tech and photo assistant in New York and Philly on the side. “Obviously there’s the financial stability that provides, but it’s also a way to stay in the industry and make connections,” he says. “Plus, I’m always trying to diversify. It’s the same as surfing a different break, which keeps things fresh and exciting. Ultimately, the non-surf work makes me a better photographer in the long run.”
That covers the professionalism that’s led this outsider Philly guy to become a staple in the New Jersey surfing world…. which just leaves the passion side of the equation, something often lost on full-time surf shooters jetting around the world from one dream assignment to the next. “Surfing and shooting are my biggest decompression tools at this point,” he says. “I don’t look at surf photography as my job — I look at it as something that calls to me, a passion that gets into your blood. If somewhere down the line things start happening, I’ll be stoked. But look at Ryan Miller — he’s put in his time for a solid eight years, and things are just finally starting to come together for him. So if I never make a living off of it, I won’t be upset. Going on trips and having a blast with my friends is still rewarding either way.”
Nearly 25 years after beginning his surfing career, and only five after establishing his place in New Jersey’s pantheon of surf photographers, that makes Rich a veritable lifer, welcome at any beach from Cape May to Sandy Hook. But realizing that his ball-busting Garden State brethren will never let him off easy, Rich finishes with a splash of sarcasm. “I’m a much better photographer than surfer, so the hardest part is watching everybody get great waves,” he laughs. “It pays off a little, though — the boys still drop in on me, but they also give me a few every now and again.”
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