Ray Collins' entry into surf photography is an entertaining tale. Endearing even. It's a story of suburban redemption, and although I've only known Ray a short time I always enjoy recounting it.

So clearly I'm not going to let this opportunity pass.

Up until 2008 Ray was a career coal miner. His workplace was deep under the escarpment that abuts his hometown - that being Thirroul in the region more widely known as the Coal Coast.

In this line of work each shift is spent covered in a black lather. A grimy combination of sweat and soot. Not only is it hot and dirty, but it's also physically taxing, so when Ray buckled his knee six years ago while down the mine, it wasn't a surprise. Such injuries are expected of those who work at the literal coal face.

During his convalescence Ray couldn't walk and so sought any diversion possible from the confines of his lounge chair. An unlikely choice for entertainment was to buy a digital camera and read the manual from start to finish – twice. By the time his knee healed Ray had a thorough understanding of the inner workings of his new digital camera: each function, each sensor, each sub-system. All that dry, technical knowledge assimilated into his keen mind.

And when his knee was strong enough to don a pair of flippers and enter the water, Ray applied that knowledge. He proved to be a very good photographer: in two months he had his first published shot, in four months his first cover. Looking at the ocean through a viewfinder things became possible, and when applying his deft command those possibilities became attainable. Ray developed his own style, something that would've been lost to the surfing world had serendipity not intervened.

Thus did Ray became a surf photographer, and thus is the title to his first book explained. More than a cheap pun, Found At Sea is a metaphor of Ray's rescue from an otherwise uncreative life.

Although Ray's talent was measured by how quickly his work was published by surf magazines, in time he rose beyond them. Surf magazines – White Horses notwithstanding – operate to a narrow brief: the surfer is the point of interest in most published photographs. Ray transcended that framework, and the very point when he did is included in Found At Sea. “This is the photo that kicked it all off. I realised I wanted to shoot empty waves,” says the caption to a stunning wide shot of Pipeline.

For the most part surfers are absent in Found At Sea. Where a surfer is in frame they're either a reference point for scale or they're subsumed within the scene. In Ray's world the surfer must share equal billing with the wave, the sky, the light...

With an absence of surfers Found At Sea can't strictly be called a book for surfers. Certainly surfers will instantly be drawn to the images, though when Ray moved away from the 'surf magazine brief' he also moved into territory where anyone who appreciates art will appreciate his work. Ray's photos emphasise form in the manner of a talented sculptor, and they emphasis tone in the manner of a brilliant painter. And like all good art it causes you to see things anew.

Photos of this quality deserve good presentation, and fortunately for Ray he had Gra Murdoch to curate his portfolio and design Found At Sea. Gra is the editor/designer of the aforementioned White Horses and Found At Sea shares the same august design principle. It's clean, bold, and austere. Considered too: a South Coast sequence reaches its crescendo in a double page spread; turning a page mimics the act of a pitching lip; a whole page is rendered black drawing the eye to the image opposite. White space is similarly used to contain and to compliment.

Each spread in Found At Sea evokes pleasant emotion. On multiple occasions I found myself thinking that despite twenty years of surfing I've never seen a wave do that. But of course I have. Anyone who's spent a length of time in the ocean has also seen such things - they just haven't seen them through Ray's eyes.

Found At Sea is self published and is available for purchase at raycollinsphoto.com

PS: It would be remiss of me not to mention there's an introduction by Kelly Slater. Ray was pretty friggen stoked about that.