Thomas Petriken has been on board for only a few weeks now maybe a month but he has already been in the water with multiple photographers like Ryan Struck, Carter McCoy and my favorite the hair farmer himself Jeff Smith. When I first spoke with Tom I told him that I wanted him to keep his camera with him so he could grab some good lifestyle shots for the site and he mentioned how he had just gotten a poloroid camera. Tom has been all over the place with his poloroid snapping shots left and right.

Here is a little of the Thomas Petriken Collection below and here are a few words from the artist himself

Hey, hi, hello or however you want to say it. My name is Thomas Petriken and I am a 21 year old surfer from New Jersey. I just joined the Atwater White Tigers and I am really stoked to be apart of this company. When I got on Mike asked me to send some photos over so you can see what happens in my everyday life. I wanted to do something different so I got the idea to revive my Polaroid One Step Camera that has been collecting dust on my dresser since way long before myspace, facebook, and twitter took over our lives. I started looking for film for it, found out that it hasn’t been made since 2008. I didn’t want to give up so I just took the risk and left myself at the mercy of Amazon.com. Three days later my film arrived and I took my first photo. I knew this was going to be fun, I am now addicted.

The waves were horrible this morning where I live so myself and Ryan Struck took a journey to south jersey to find some waves. Finally after an hour and a half drive through rain and getting pulled over for speeding on the bridge we were greeted by long lefts and offshore winds!!

This is me and Rob Kelly after our second session in Ocean City that day. He was like our tour guide for the day since we knew nothing about the area. By this time the wind was freezing and howling offshore. Right after this photo was taken I got stuck in my wetsuit in the parking lot. For surf photos from this day check out thenewsurf.com

This wave is right down the street from my house, it was a little stormy this morning but there was a couple fun rights sneaking in. The afternoon session ended up glassing off and getting good.

Everyone forgot to bring their cameras so this is the only photo documentation that the night even happened. After a long night of gambling, going to bars, and other things we decided it was time to take the picture, but one problem we didn’t have a photographer. We walked around the casino to find a logical candidate and luckily found a man on the slots. He didn’t speak a word of english but he did know how to use a camera. Right after the flash went off a lady security guard was telling us “no pictures” due to a quick hand off the polaroid was saved.

I woke up the next day thinking it was going to flat. There was still chest high waves and it was glassy so I rushed home to get in the water. I ended up surfing for 5 hours with Carter and nobody else out. In this picture I am pretty sure I am delirious from hypothermia since I surfed the whole session without a hood. Ice cream headaches are the worst!!!

This was the first Atwater Night I have ever attended. There was a good vibe with some good people. It was cool seeing everyone coming out.

This is the sign going into my town, I live right down the road.

Friday Night!!!!! Dave’s Birthday!!!! This was a night consisting of spooky artwork, alcohol, lots of humans, and some great music courtesy of Atlantic Atlantic, The Black Jesuses, and Scott Liss and the Sixty Six. This is our motley crew in the parking lot after the show was over.

This is me and Laurie getting our yoga on at the dock overlooking the river. It was a really warm day so it was nice to be able to work out in the fresh air.

My last picture of the roll, a complete failure haha. I was painting easter eggs and thought it would be funny to draw the Atwater symbol on. I tried taking the picture while I was painting it so it didn’t work.