Humans of Red Bull Illume: Vernon Deck, photographer
My main thing is : I only live once and I just want to be happy. So complaining is not an option. I don’t want to sit and wait for things. This is why I bought a boat. I have never had a boat before, but I have never had the excuse neither, not to do something. I was living in Switzerland for 20 years, out of New Zealand originally. And one day, while in Hawaii, I felt that I had lost the connection with the ocean, and that’s when I decided to go sailing. And once I had decided this, I realized that I was going to save money with it. I understood that I could work less, but have more.
I have never been a material person, and I do know that the rest of the world needs more to buy more in order to have more, to buy even more. And now I feel that I do have way more than ever before. I have never felt so rich! I enjoy my boat 6 months a year so much. Without internet, mobile phone, without people. I then think about my winter job and what I’m going to do the other 6 months as a senior photographer at Volcom. People say that I am crazy doing this, that it’s dangerous. But driving a car in Zurich is much more dangerous. If somebody doesn’t’ know something, it’s very easy to be afraid of it. You just need to start, and you’ll find out that it is possible, then it is not scary anymore.