Meet David Pu’u of Neo Creative

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Pu’u.

Hi David, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Son of a Hawaiian Aerospace Engineer and a Yugoslavian mother whose parents immigrated had immigrated here and settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They met as my Father attended Marquette University on the GI Bill.

My first camera was the same Army-issued Nikon kit my Dad used when he was deployed to Japan and then Indo-China to photograph and do mapping Intel work, which was later used in the Vietnam War.

Grew up in Goleta. Decided I wanted to be a surfer at age 4 after seeing someone ride to shore south of the Manhattan Beach Pier. This was where my parents had moved after my Dad graduated from Marquette University and began his rather interesting Engineering career.

I was a competitive swimmer in AAU at the age of seven. Bodysurfed and road inflatable rafts and foamies. My parents let me get my first surfboard at 11 which I shared w/ my two brothers. We had established a rule that you could ride the board until you fell off, then the next brother got his turn. After two weeks, I stopped falling, my brothers got tired of waiting, and that 9’2″ longboard became mine.

By the age of 13, I was building surfboards in my parent’s garage and surfing the various breaks in Goleta and up on the Gaviota Coast.

In High School, my parents forced me into other sports and mandated a high GPA under the threat of losing my surfing privileges. So I was on the swim team, waterpolo team, we started a surf team and a bike club and I got pretty good grades, so I surfed constantly. By 18 years of age, I was in the Olympic Development Program for cycling and had stopped swimming, but still surfed and was competing in that as well.

Meanwhile, I was still shooting with my Dad’s Nikon and studying Literature and Art and was staff on my High School Newspaper and starting to do some work for Surfer magazine.

Wound up leaving cycling at the age of twenty and turning professional in surfing. Wrote what was probably the first Photo Incentive contract and competed internationally. I was widely published as an athlete. I also apprenticed in the Surfboard industry and became a shaper.

Wound up eventually heading up my own manufacturing and retail corp and opened some stores. I left all of that in 1998, divorced my wife at that time, and my two sons and I lived in what had been the family home in Ventura CA. Where I live to this day.

I had inadvertently started swimming with a camera in 1996 shooting empty waves constantly. Swimming alone in the pre and early dawn hours. A couple of my old photo editors were working at Surfing, Surfer and Surfers Journal and they pointed out that because of the retiring out of a few iconic water photogs, I was really the only one producing wave work.

They began to publish me.

In the meanwhile, I was working in the entertainment Industry in a variety of capacities and learned most departments, with a strong lean into Photography and Cinematography. I think I did around a dozen films and TV productions working in various capacities.

I was already doing editorial feature work and was both an assignment and freelancer for maybe four dozen publications at that point. I was also being represented by Corbis images and did work in various capacities for and with them, becoming a part of a group of 200 of some of the best Photographers of our era.

At that time, I began working extensively in high-speed motion picture capture and was hired to build a water subject-based library for a well-known commercial Cinematographer. Shot a few films as water unit Director of Photography. Traveled extensively around the world with my stills and motion picture kits, doing general editorial, commercial and big wave work.

In 2000 after filming the first Big Wave World Tow surf championship at Peahi (Jaws) on Maui, I began studying PWC (jetski) water safety work under Shawn Alladio founder and lead instructor at K 38 Rescue. I worked under her in various capacities and in study-training of all phased of risk mitigation and rescue in marine environments for 20 years. We trained all branches of the US Military and established RWC (rescue watercraft) programs for each branch as well as working water safety for multiple big wave projects and events.

I was also working as a brand development photographer and filmmaker for multiple prestigious brands who were in watersports, action sports and other related capacities.

I have done segment directing, cinematography direction and DP work in a variety of films and broadcast projects.

As a brand Development photographer for a fledgeling fashion accessory company, I eventually married a long-time friend who was founder of that company. Four years ago, I became its CEO and remained as director of Content creation.

Today with the amazing shift in technology, I have found that my 200-pound travel kit has now been reduced to about 40 pounds and three bags from four cases and I say this a lot: “We as Photographers and Film Makers truly are living in the future with the tools currently available”.

My career is so strange. If I actually wrote the entire thing down, no one would ever believe it. Sometimes even I have a hard time with all of the things I have found myself immersed within.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Ha! Not without its lumps. I walked in on a nighttime burglary in my Ventura store while doing radio reporting live on a fire which I later learned that the burglar had started. That was rough. But I survived by playing dead. It was one of the key moments which motivated me to both change careers and to divorce. Which I did simultaneously, and also found myself inadvertently thrust into single parenthood for a while.

One of the rather famous photographers I worked with as an athlete once told me this: “Out of great suffering comes great Art”. I have found this to be true on several levels.

As you know, we’re big fans of Neo Creative Inc. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
I am a brand development specialist and have been able to work in the development of a large number of very successful brands and companies.

I have also been involved in rather high-level work for ARUP and participated in the Sea Space summits at Google and Jones Day in Washington DC.

I have been able to contribute to work for Wallace J Nichols’ project “Blue Mind”, and am both featured in his book which was at the top of the NYT best-selling Science books for a very long time, and have spoken as a guest lecturer in the related neuroscience summit, on the role of beauty in neurological development.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
They can e-mail or call me to pitch projects. Although I am very busy, I am open to new challenges.

Support is best done through the patronage of Betty Belts-Ocean Room Gallery, our retail location which is located in downtown Ventura and online at www.bettybelts.com

Contact Info:

• Website: www.davidpuu.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidpuu/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidpuu
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/davidfpuu
• Other: https://vimeo.com/user3013888

Image Credits
David Pu’u Photography