Photo/Stoner: The Rise, Fall, and Mysterious Disappearance of Surfing's Greatest Photographer Hardcover – November 2, 2006

I splint the rent with Ron Stoner for about a year in Dana Point. (Dana Strand Rd) We were about the same age. both lens-men. This was before the new harbor was built.I had a day job , he lived on the proceeds of his lens work work. And was getting better by the day. We talked Photo Art all the time, around the apartment. Then he took a walk on the one-way recreational drug highway. and fell off the end of the Earth. Roomer is he turned up in the Coeur d'Alane, Idaho area. Who knows? Some say they talked with him! What is not included in this book was the, going off to war, in Vet-Nam, and not coming back that was 'stilling the air' on the Beach at that time. I liked her, but a 14 year old girl friend is asking for trouble. Oddly I think the two just held hands and talked, and that's all.Thinking about it Ron may have had Autism of some sort.

I got to know Ron Stoner at the beach at Riviera, San Clemente, and had a half-dozen conversations with him. The guy was very spaced out, but many were back around 69 and 70. One late summer day, instead of just sitting there, he surfed on a south swell day, caught a nice left, and did this thunderbird arch and spread on his backhand. I saw it as I paddled out just in front of him, as I had ridden the previous wave. He was riding that white Steve Kroll semi-gun he had. Ron once spoke of making a cosmic surfing movie, with a Rick Griffin cartoon, to start, "...at the best beaches with the best surfers in the world..." Too bad he didn't pull it off. I also remember walking back from Cotton's Point to Riv, talking with Rick, when he just turned around, and had to walk back, because, as he explained, "...it's just too beautiful to leave...". Ron captured those perfect moments in a surfer's life. Ron was one of the first to capture surfing from the water in his photography. Ron Stoner loved surfing and the ocean more than anyone I ever met. This book is good, but Stoner's best work can be found in SURFER magazine in the Ranch and Black's issues.

In 1966, I spent my first summer in Ocean City, New Jersey. I managed to scrape together $119.00 and buy a Dewey Weber Performer. I went to every surf film advertised at Surfer Supply, and I read each issue of Surfer magazine. I also spent the following two summers working and surfing in Ocean City. Surfer magazine was part of the surfer lifestyle and the most memorable photos I remember of that time were taken by Ron Stoner. Many of those photos are in Matt Warshaw's superb book.Warshaw paints a vivid picture of a very talented young man, Stoner, who was a bonafide photographic genius when it came to surfing photography. He also describes Stoner's tragic decent into madness in the prime of his life. The most intriguing parts of the book are Warshaw's description of Stoner's disappearance, a stunning single sighting in Idaho in 1982, never to be seen or heard from again.It reminds me of the nomadic and ultimately tragic life of Mickey Dora. Some believe Stoner is still alive, but most who knew him believe he died years ago. Those like me wish he was still with us and would take up his camera once again.

I was surfing in the frigid waters of Northern California during the Stoner 60s. And for my buddies and myself, it was perhaps SoCal, even more than Hawaii, that was our Mecca, the distant surfer's paradise, consisting of better and more numerous surf spots, along with warmer water, than we had up north. This vision of a surfer's paradise was in large part revealed to us, burned into our brains, by Surfer Magazine and Ron Stoner's photographs.Of course, the photography in Photos/Stoner is wonderful, often mouth-watering. However, the very pleasant surprise for me in perusing Photos/Stoner was the truly excellent accompanying narrative, which deftly sketches an articulate, insightful bio, not only of the conflicted life of surf photographer nonpareil Ron Stoner, but also of the fleeting surf paradise that was the coast of Southern California during that long-gone 1960s era.

Perfectly timed to capitalize on the current retro surf craze, this is a well-written and -researched book on the life of a talented man who had a very troubled life. Matt Warshaw wrote the Encyclopedia of Surfing (an absolute must-have), and has done a good job on this biography of Ron Stoner. The photographs alone are worth the cost of the publication. Anyone interested in 1960s-70s surf culture will appreciate the beautiful photographs and layout as well as the thoughtful text.

This book has some of the best vintage surfing photography I have ever seen and thats why anyone would buy this book. What I wasn't expecting was that the text would tell such a great story about the reality of that lifestyle in the 60's and early 70's and the destruction it caused to some of its people, namely Mr Stoner. Coming from the Midwest, I really enjoyed both the pictures and the text.

I never tire of looking at surfing photography. In each and every wave, I imagine me riding it and it stimulates me, gets the juices flowing and drives me to get out there. This book does that.

So many gorgeous photos lovingly laid out. A tragic insight into the man's (heck - he was a kid) life. So much done by age 23!!If you like the Surfers Journal, Leroy Grannis, Longboard culture, etc., then this book is for you. Loads of fabulous photographs, IN AMAZING COLOR!Also, it's very intelligently written.A great value for the money too!