South Coast photographer Dean Dampney chose an unusual place to launch his photographic book - a car park.
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Based in Lake Tabourie, south of Ulladulla, Dampney has published The Ocean Diviners, a 240-page book of colour and black and white photos he has taken over the years.
To officially launch the book, he chose the car park at Ulladulla's Golf Course reef - "one of the better known and better quality surf breaks on our little stretch of coastline".
"It was very much intentional to take the highbrow art scene out of the book launch and make it really accessible, particularly to the type of people who are both pictured and drawn to the subject.
"Part of the book launch included a slide show and the slide show was projected on the amenities block wall."
Locations along the coastline from the Illawarra all the way down to the Victorian border make an appearance in The Ocean Diviners, but Dampney said it's not a book full of photographs of surfers riding waves.
Instead, it includes kids having fun in the breakers, somersaulting off the edge of a wharf or women out for a dip in the ocean.
"It's portraiture for the most part, it's people being pictured in their environment, and that environment being beachscapes and oceanscapes," he said.
"All the images are human-centric, the focus is not on the environment. It's not landscape photography it's people photography."
Dampney has been a photographer for 25 years and as well as holding 10 solo exhibitions he has also worked as a newspaper photographer for The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald and a wedding photographer
In recent years, the photography has taken a back seat for his work as a professional psychotherapist, though for Dampney, the former led him to the latter.
"It's definitely not for a lack of love of photography," he said. "That's a great love for me and I'm pretty sure it always will be.
"I was effectively working as a photographer with a really heightened aspect towards connecting with my subject. That connection went beyond simply the visual, it became a human connection.
"So what I've done is simply kept the connection and removed all the barriers, including the camera."
The Ocean Diviners is available for purchase at https://theoceandiviners.com/