Andrew ‘Shorty’ Buckley is coming in hot. He arrives for our sit-down chat fresh off the set of a new Netflix series featuring Charlize Theron and Eric Bana.

Shooting video for mainstream productions is just one of the many hats Shorty wears these days. His creative focus has always been a little splintered, but for the better part of two decades between 1990 and 2010, Shorty was a platinum member of the unofficial surf photographer’s guild; a major player in an era when surf companies still enjoyed eyewatering profits , performance levels soared and a top lensman could have his work featured in a dozen thriving surf mags around the globe.

Shorty was still a kid when his dad passed away. Perhaps the absence of a father rendered the objects left behind more precious – mythical ornaments to fill the void where memories might have been. Shorty recalls being drawn to a particular image. “I saw a photo that my dad took of the Opera House, at my auntie’s house, after he passed away. And my mum told me about when he took it… It was black and white, it was taken at night; and the story about him resting it on the car, putting a jacket on the car, framing it up, and doing a long exposure, and all of that kind of intrigued me.”

The picture lit a spark. By age 10 Shorty’s favourite toy was a point and shoot and as soon as he was old enough, he talked his way into a part-time gig at a camera shop. At the store he was free to tinker and indulge a voracious curiosity for the elements behind a distilled moment. School wasn’t Shorty’s thing, but he was a total autodidact when it came to photography.