“The day I decided to not give a fuck to stupid things anymore, I got drunk, sang songs from a rooftop to a nonexistent audience, had the longest conversation with my best friends about life, quit studying and decided I wanted to become a photographer of...I didn’t know yet! ”

Because isn’t that the dream? Everyone wants to travel the world, be happy and earn money for their hobbies. Did I have a night where everything changed for a lifetime and lasted in my brain forever? No, I didn’t, but I realised that way later.

I went to Bali, became a photographer and got stuck in the biggest hustle of my life. I didn’t get lost or find myself. I got broke and wasn’t really happy. So, what’s the point? Why is everyone tel- ling you that you’ll be happy when you travel and that getting lost is the best thing can happen to you?

For me, problems don’t stay at home just because you’re going on a surf trip. You’re putting them away for the first few weeks until the reality kicks in and you realise that society is lying to get you to pay the hotel or fancy food every day.

In real life, people are still struggling and that’s completely fine. There’s nothing bad about it. You have to work on it with a lot of patience. And I guess traveling and surfing might be a step in the whole story escape the pres- sures of society.

So, the goal of my photography is to capture both the bright and the dark side of traveling. The melancholy and the beauty of it. And I want to remem- ber that not everyone can be happy just because they change their destination or stand on the nose of their longboards. Happiness for me is within sadness.

It’s growing from your failures. There is no real difference between the two.

I stayed around Canggu (Bali) for four months to get to know new people, to experience life with them. To capture their happy moments as well as their sad moments. To talk until the sun rises. To have my pro- blems and to help others with their own.

Trust me, you can find a lot of people with broken dreams, sadness, happiness and all kind of different things going on in their lives. For me, that’s the beauty of it. I try to capture stuff without putting any pressure on myself, without creating in a pre- conceived sort of way, without hiding feelings. I try to be honest with myself and honest with everyone else. For the people I photograph, it’s important to know that what they do and who they are is always interesting to someone — I just try to freeze those moments in time and space.

I’m Simon, a 28-year-old surf photo- grapher from Germany. I shoot surfing without actually shooting surfing.