David Maurice Smith moved from Canada to Australia a few years back, where he settled near the water in Sydney. "I was living in Whistler for a long time," he mentioned in a recent email, "and was in a bit of a photographic rut. Despite being such an amazing place in so many ways, there just weren't opportunities to chase the type of photography I was after. I grew up in Vancouver and didn't really feel like that would be the change I was needing either. So in a fairly spur of the moment decision, we decided to pack up and move to Sydney. There's a vibrant photographic industry here and I've been able to mentor with some amazing photographers right off the bat. When you go somewhere new it's like a fresh start, you really get to reinvent. And then, of course, there was the prospect of surfing more regularly—we're a hundred metres from the closest break, so that makes it pretty easy to get wet. I'm really lucky to be able to sprint to the beach for a quick rip when I need it."

The black-and-whites in the slideshow above are examples of Smith's beautiful work—in this case, depicting fellow photographer Murray Fraser, who runs the nifty Sydney surf photo site Sprout Daily.

More of Smith's work is online here.