Out Of The CT’s Shadow, Taj Finds Some Cover Of His Own

It took two years for Taj Lindblad to finally score on a surf trip.

“He’s been traveling with his sister [Sawyer] to contests mostly,” cinematographer and editor of Reata del Mar, Jacob Vanderwork told Stab. “He ends up surfing with a hundred people out and struggles to get enough good waves.

“This trip was very special to him,” Jacob continued. Taj took a break from contest-led travel, put his own cash down, and flew south to a place known for its carbon copy succession of right sand-bottomed pointbreaks.

The edit, put together by Jacob and shot by one of his protégés, Cayden Williams, came from a five-day trip to Mexico. “They got three days of fun waves, and one day where it was particularly good and they surfed the entire day,” he continued. The amount of quality, and, assumingly, set waves, packed into such a short edit is staggering for someone who’d been surf-starved for two laps around the sun.

Jacob’s holistic, authorial approach to making films means he likes to work on a concept, shoot it, and edit it himself. Editing someone else’s footage is not something he finds particularly easy. In this case, however, he had another San Clemente grom pick the soundtrack.

“Taj works on ranches,” Jacob added. “He takes people out all day and guides them on tours, and he never really has that much time to go on trips like this.

“When he got back he told me, ‘Dude, I actually got good waves and a bunch of clips!’”

They ended up watching all the footage together, and it instantly made sense to make something from it. Taj told Jacob, “I just want it to be like one of those old Dane Reynolds videos where he didn’t show that much lifestyle, just a lot of surfing.”

“Perfect,” Jacob told him.

And that’s how Reata del Mar ended up here.