Ron Meeks has been a great friend, or best friend, going all the way back to our high-school days in Clear Lake. Ron is an accomplished artist, surfer and surfboard fabricator. Ron has been featured in Surfer and Surfing Magazines for regional surfing competitions and for his successful Meeks brand surfboards. He moved to Hawaii shortly after school and worked under some of the biggest names in surfboard design. Ron moved to Fort Worth to help his dad with their family business around the same year I ended up in North Texas. Now he is on a plane headed back to Hawaii as I write this blog post. Ron will be getting his Meeks Surfboards business back up and running in no time.

Ron stopped by the other night to say goodbye and I couldn’t let him leave without first sitting him down to photograph his new face. The beard is a recent addition and quite remarkable (or creepy). If Charlie Manson rode a Harley and made a living on commercial fishing boats, he would have a beard like this. You can see Ron (sans beard) at his website ronmeeks.com. We used one directional light with a dark background and pumped the contrast to enhance his new homeless look.  Click on the thumbnails below to see larger images.