About Us

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

My name is Dan Howard and OceanArtwork is my business.
Its a project I started many years ago. Originally the idea was to simply set up an online gallery to display and sell my own photos and artwork.
But when my good friends Jason and Tina Williams from Driftwood Timber Surf came on board the idea quickly grew into something much bigger. A site where I could promote other artists and photographers as well as my own work.
Maybe I should start at the beginning….. Heres a brief history;

My passion for photography started at an early age when I won a plastic camera at a school fete. it took me a while to convince my parents to invest in film for it, but when they did, I think we were all surprised with the results and even more surprised that a toy camera actually worked.
In 1970 at ten years of age my family moved to Cronulla, and the path my life was to take, changed forever when I discovered surfing.
Cronulla was a great place to grow up in the ’70s. Especially if you were a surfer…. In those days you could still get a few waves to yourself if you were onto the conditions. Which was pretty cool for me as from the front verandah of my house I could see most of the Cronulla / Bate bay area…..and if I stood on the railing I could even see the infamous ‘Shark island’ over the top of neighbouring houses

I owned a few different cameras over time and then purchased my first SLR camera in ‘76.Not long after that I purchased a cheap telephoto lens and started taking surf shots. Unfortunately most of these shots have been lost or misplaced over the years.
Surfing magazines of the time were full of articles and beautifully composed photos of nomadic surfers travelling to exotic locations. In my teenage years I devoured every surf magazine published from cover to cover. The world of the travelling surfer was new and exciting and I couldn’t wait to be a part of it.

I ventured to Bali in 1980 and was amazed with the waves, the culture, the beauty of the Balinese landscape and the warm and friendly people.
This was the start of a wandering lifestyle that was to last over a decade for me.
I started submitting my photos to magazines with limited success. Then I had my first article published in TRACKS titled ‘A Great Escape’. It was about living and surfing on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Over the years I had quite a few articles and photos published in various surfing magazines such as TRACKS, WAVES, DEEP, SURFERS JOURNAL and others.
I was also lucky enough to live, surf and photograph some of the worlds most beautiful and remote surfing locations.
Of course all this travel was done on a very limited budget…at times so limited Im amazed I survived.
I realise now my experiences were all the more richer because of this.

In the ’90s my life changed dramatically when I went from being someone who could carry almost everything I owned on my back to having a mortgage and 3 beautiful children.
I photographed weddings on the weekend, worked nights and studied Information Technology during the week.
After 3 years of study, computers took over my life. I already had the idea for Ocean Artwork and was trying to learn the web design skills I needed to get the site going.

But instead of working on the site I was sidetracked and ended up working full time teaching computer courses, fixing computers and constructing other peoples web sites. In fact I did pretty much every other thing in I.T. except what I had started out to do …OceanArtwork.com…I had to pay the bills of course.
This is as I said a short history. I will be adding more photos and stories from my travels past present and future.

So now here I am living on the Gold Coast and OceanArtwork is finally finished. Well to tell you the truth it never really will be finished as it will be growing and changing all the time as I add new products and new artists come on board.

Hope you like it

Cheers
Dan Howard