Tai Jennison

Reining from the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Tai Jennison is a 20 year old videographer. Our interview with Tai covers famed Ments trips, veggie gardens in isolation, working on a project with Lachie McKinnon and Sebastian Zietz and much more. Enjoy some of his latest clips here.

Hey Michael! Thank you for reaching out to me! 

I am from the Sunshine Coast, Queensland and I am 20 years old. 

I first got into shooting photos when I was about 13 years old. My brother and I got a little underwater digital camera for Christmas in Bali that year. We had been over in Bali for a couple months by that stage and we were surfing a lot so I started shooting some water photos of my brother surfing and yeah kinda grew from there. Went through the whole GoPro stage for a year or so and later moved onto a housing from there. The major change was going from photo to video after realising that that’s where it was at for what I wanted to do. But a good friend of mine, Lachie McKinnon kinda took me under his wing and showed me the ropes.

He got me on my first proper film project trip. We went to the North Shore of Hawaii for a month with MySurf to shoot a movie for Oakley Battleclips when I was 16 or so. 

Before that I had met up with Lachie in Bali when the Hueys had the Komune QS and he introduced me to a lot of the guys around there and helped me out. I think that’s where it all kind of started and I started getting consistent film trips after that.

 At the moment I’m shooting with the BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera which I’m loving and in the water I’m using Salty Housings.

 Favourite thing to shoot is surfing for sure but I also really enjoy shooting film photos when I’m travelling. When I go away there is a lot of stuff that we don’t shoot for our clips so it’s cool to be able to have a film camera to capture the raw moments like that. Pretty exciting going through the whole process of it too I think. 

Favourite place to shoot would either be Pipe/Backdoor or anywhere in West Aus really. Pretty cool place West Aus is.

 I surf on most of the trips I go on, it’s something I always try to squeeze in on a trip. All the boys I regularly travel with are always stoked for me to put the camera away and have a few fun sessions with them anyways.

Well yeh haven’t been doing a whole lot with this virus going on. 

My girlfriend and I did plant a veggie patch the other day though... so gardening maybe? Other than that I just enjoy spending time around home and catching up with friends and family. 

Maybe my first ever Mentawais boat trip. 

At the time Lachie McKinnon and Sebastian Zietz were working on “Happily Stoked” and I did a bit of stuff with them in the past for it so they gave me the call up to come to Bali for the Hueys event and then go directly from there to the Mentawai Islands off Sumatra. The Hueys event was insane cause Brenno (Midget Magic) was on the boat trip and actually won the whole event and we were all leaving the next day to fly to Padang. I have no idea how anyone made it to the airport from the after party but we all did it!

We scored pretty much the whole boat trip and had the best time. It was Robbie Rickard’s 21st when we were there too so we had a huge bonfire piss up on one of the island and Seabass decided to throw all the fireworks in it. That was pretty scary haha.

The older guys I’ve travelled with a bit have always been good roll models for me so I’d say them as well as my friends and family.

 

Well I had the year planned out well! I just got back from Hawaii a couple weeks ago shooting with Keanu Miller for Volcom. 

Then I had planned on going back to Indonesia, then to Mexico, Europe and Canada to finish it off. Guess we will just have to wait and see how all this virus stuff pans out. I’m pretty keen to get back into it soon though! Haha.

Definitely going to be working on some projects once everything’s rollin again.

Cheers guys, big love.