Serious injury sometimes has a way of bending fate in fortuitous directions. Nathan Smith was competing on the WQS and Australian domestic circuit [ACC] when he came close to tearing his pectoral muscle off the bone. Luckily he’d just won a contest, The Avoca Pines Charity Classic. Faced with five months of surfless misery Smithy decided to swap the trip, that came as a prize for winning the contest, for a video camcorder. A month after buying the camcorder he’d traded it in for a 35mm SLR stills camera. This decision resulted in a major career inversion. Nathan was now preoccupied with capturing waves and surfing in the most creative and engaging manner possible. It wasn’t long before his work was featured in Tracks. “Once I had my first poster run I was done,” recalls Smithy. Thirteen years down the track and he is a senior photographic contributor at Tracks and is regarded as one of the world’s best surf lens-men.