THE JUDGes

Taylor Steele (born 7 June 1972) is a filmmaker. Steele has been involved in the surf film industry for over two decades. He has won awards as both director and producer. His production company, Poor Specimen, has launched the careers of some of surfing's most influential figures and has played a role in the success of bands such as Blink-182, Pennywise and Jack Johnson who were introduced in Steele's early movies.

Lauren L. Hill hosts The Waterpeople Podcast and authored She Surf: The Rise of Female Surfing. Lauren’s surfing has featured in numerous films including ‘The Church of the Open Sky,’ ‘Bella Vita,’ and ‘Transparentsea Voyage.’ 
 
Raised on the small barrier island of Anastasia, Lauren grew up in the Atlantic, freshwater springs, and brackish waterways of Florida’s East Coast. She has degrees in Environmental and Social Science from Stetson University. Her multi-media work aims to employ storytelling to build a more inclusive surf community and motivate action to protect our planet.

Laure Mayer is a surfer, entrepreneur, and self-taught product designer immersed in surf culture and creative expression. Raised in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France, she found her artistic voice through longboarding before moving to Byron Bay in 2011. There, she became a key figure in women’s longboarding and launched Lore of the Sea, a surfsuit brand blending style, sustainability, and performance.

Competing in iconic longboard events worldwide, Laure has built a career around the ocean, connecting with surf communities globally. In 2018, she joined Oxbow as an ambassador, venturing into film production to tell stories of women’s surfing, surf culture, and sustainability.

Through design, sport, and media, Laure continues to celebrate and elevate the art of surfing, inspiring the next generation of water women.

Spencer Frost is an internationally award-winning Filmmaker from Avalon Beach - Sydney who specialises in adventure, travel and surfing cinematography.

His latest feature-length surf film “Corners of the Earth - Kamchatka” shot over a 2-month adventure to the far east of Russia has already picked up multiple awards all over the world, screened and toured in over 20 + countries, topped the iTunes documentary charts and is now available to watch on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Google TV, Fetch. 

Spencer has worked with a number of international brands, agencies and production companies including BBC Earth, National Geographic, RED BULL Media House, Japan Airlines, Tourism Australia, Corona, P&O Cruises and so many more. His work has taken him to some of the furthest corners of our world - including Iceland, Africa, Russia, Indonesia, South Pacific, all through the USA and of course all over his home country Australia.

Vaughan Blakey is a revered voice in surf culture, known for his sharp wit, deep knowledge, and infectious passion for wave-riding history. As a former editor of Surfing World magazine, he played a pivotal role in shaping modern surf storytelling. Vaughan is the co-host of the wildly popular Ain’t That Swell podcast, where his humor and insight bring surf narratives to life, from grassroots grommets to world tour giants. A masterful commentator, he captures the raw energy of surf competitions and culture with an unmistakable Aussie charm. Beyond the mic, Vaughan’s influence extends to surf filmmaking, creative projects, and celebrating the sport’s rich heritage. His dedication to keeping surf culture fun, irreverent, and authentic makes him a true legend in the industry.

Tim Baker is an award-winning journalist and storyteller specialising in surfing history and culture and the best-selling author of numerous books on surfing.
His latest book Patting The Shark documents his journey managing a stage 4 cancer diagnosis. Tim wrote Patting The Shark as part of a creative writing PhD scholarship from Griffith University. He is a former editor of Tracks, Surfing Life and Slow Living magazines, and a two-time winner of the Surfing Australia Hall of Fame Culture Award. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review, the Sunday Age, the Bulletin, Inside Sport, GQ, Text Journal as well as surfing magazines around the world.

Pacha Luque Light is a 23 year old Ecuadorian-Australian surfer led by passion and purpose, sharing stories and doing what she can to heal the Earth. 

At 14, she organised a paddle to raise awareness for a World Surfing Reserve from Snapper to Burleigh Heads, Australia. 

She competed on the WSL World Qualifying Series full time for 5 years, she decided to step back from the contests and shift into free surfing and advocate/storytell for ocean playgrounds. Since then she’s traveled back to their birth country of Ecuador and continued her work in ocean conservation with coastal protection with local communities as a Patagonia Surf Ambassador.

Jolyon Hoff is an Australian filmmaker best known in the surf community for Searching For Michael Peterson and You Should Have Been Here Yesterday. He’s also leading The Surf Film Archive, a project dedicated to finding, scanning and restoring all of Australia’s lost Surf Films from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Over 150 hours of footage has been scanned so far and the goal of the archive is to help share the history of local surfing for generations to come. 

He is currently working on a live show and multi-media gallery installation using the restored footage, and making a film about the early surfing explorers in Bali and Indonesia.

For more visit lightsoundartfilm.com or IMDB.

Ula is a storyteller. Her words and photographs have featured in Surfing World, White Horses, Pacific Longboarder, Tracks, Surf Line, Roaring Journals and The Age. Ula co-produced KIN, Patagonia’s latest ocean film, guest edited the last ‘She Has Stories’ issue of White Horses and co-curated the 'Shoulda Been Here Yesterday' exhibition at Hoop Gallery in Torquay. She is a co-founder of High Line Surf Fest and works in the editorial and design team at Patagonia.

 Formerly, Ula worked on environmental and human rights campaigns across the Asia-Pacific region for Oxfam Australia and the Red Cross Climate Centre, and as a forest campaigner in lutruwita/Tasmania. Ula loves surfboarding on all kinds of craft, hiking in beautiful places and cleaning up thousands of pieces of rubbish from remote World Heritage beaches as part of the annual Team Clean expedition. She lives in Jan Juc, on the unceded Country of the Wadawurrung people.

Mick Sowry is a storyteller and surfer. He makes photographs, films, books and magazines about the ocean. He is the award-winning writer, producer and director of The Reef and Musica
Surfica — two films made in collaboration with the Australian Chamber Orchestra — and the creative director and co=publisher of Great Ocean Quarterly, a journal of art, ideas and the sea. His. work has featured in The Surfer’s Journal, Surfing World, Surfline, and Great Ocean Quarterly. In 2022 he published ‘a spark becomes an is’ — a limited edition hardbound book of photographs and observations, precipitated by the sudden death of his wife,
Sue, in 2019.

Mick’s large-format photographic work recently featured in his solo exhibition “Spark” at Hoop Gallery in Torquay, Australia, and the group show ‘South West’ at Boom Gallery, Geelong. Mick has two sons, Joey and Tom. Both are artists. He lives, with Tom, in the village of Jan Juc, just five minutes from his beloved Bell’s Beach, on Wadawurrung Country, at the bottom of Australia.

Peppie has been a pioneer, advocate, coach, supporter and competitor of women’s surfing since the mid-1970s. Peppie is still competitive today in her 60s and still supporting and encouraging women to get involved in what she
feels is not just a sport but a way of life.

 She founded the Victorian Women’s Surfing Association in the late 70s that merged with NSW and QLD to create the AWSA, the Australian Women’s Surfing Assoc. The birth of a new generation of women surfers in Australia. Some credits include multiple Victorian state shortboard titles, 4th place Bells Easter Pro 1981. Multiple winner Qld state longboard in O/50s and 60s. Australian longboard champ 2019 to 2022 O/50 and 60s. Multiple winner Noosa Festival of Surfing and Noosa Logger. Winner of the prestigious Bill Wallace Award 2023 for her contribution to surfing.

In between surfing, Peppie had 10 years working as an actress performing in theatre, film and TV.

Tom Wegener is a Californian expat who came to Noosa in 1998 with the surf film Siestas & Olas, A Surfing Journey Through Mexico. At the time, he had been an LA-based lawyer and team rider for the late Donald Takayama. Tom married Margie and in the year 2000 they started Tom Wegener Surfboards from their property in Cooroy, where Tom was innovative in the resurgence of single-fin longboards, hollow wood surfboards and the Alaia revolution.

In 2016 Tom received a Doctorate in Surf Culture from the University of the Sunshine Coast and published his PhD in the book Surfboard Artisans - For the Love. He is currently an elected Noosa Shire Councillor. Tom is passionate about his family, the environment and surf history. He continues to develop green surfboards from wood, EPS and cork, passing on his knowledge and skills to the next generation of board builders.