Woody Gooch and Quinn Matthews Release New Book ‘Above Else’

Woody Gooch is 22 years old and has been taking photos of anything that excited him since the age of 14, which was mostly his friends skating at their local skate park in the afternoons. But now he’s about to release a book and the images will take you all the way to Nepal and back.

He’s originally from the Gold Coast where photography started as something fun, before turning it into a profession later on. A profession that as taken him around the world, to surfing sports and flooded rivers, to desserts and glacial valleys.

It has been a busy year for the self-proclaimed ‘Nikon guy’, as he has moved from Tokyo to San Francisco to change his lifestyle and work, and has just announced his book ‘Above Else’ with Quinn Matthews.

The book is limited to 333 prints and documents their travels through Nepal in late 2016, covering the busy cities, then becoming completely isolated in the Himalayas. The book will host exhibitions in LA and Tokyo before it is released in mid April.

Gooch has an outstanding ability to frame subjects within their natural world, making sure that nothing seems staged or planned. It’s presented in a way that if you were there with him, you would see exactly what appears in the photo. It’s almost as if he’s not trying to capture ‘the perfect shot’, but that he’s just trying to capture any shot, and the string of occurrences either side of that shot are more important.

Gooch also has an obsession for Wanaka in New Zealand, where he has been traveling annually for a long time now, and says it recharges his batteries and gives him fresh eyes. He’s been taking photos of Wanaka for seven years, but in the last two years he’s been working for Wanaka Tourism, who gave him access to a helicopter, which helped changed his skill set. “Every time you fly new areas appear, and it just works with how spontaneous that place is in general...It’s really addictive.” More recently, Woody has worked with clients like Dior Paris, MoMA, Corona, Nikon and more.

It’s safe to say that at just 22, Woody Gooch has done exceedingly well for a kid from the Gold Coast who started off by taking photos of his friends at the skatepark so they could upload a new Facebook profile picture.

‘Above Else’, it will be released shortly after its exhibition in LA and Tokyo.