JW: Where are you currently calling home, and how does that affect your surfing and work?
DP: I reside in West LA with my beautiful wife Kayla and our two dogs, Cosmo and Roo. Living in LA has a multitude of obstacles that can affect whether I'm working or surfing on any given day. First and foremost, it's an absolute mess traffic-wise with our enormous population, so depending on the day and our swell, you need an acute awareness of that to calculate how to tackle each day and find a wave. Whether surfing or working, I'm blessed to live in such a diverse city, surrounded by many different faces and places that inspire me to keep plugging away at my creative visions each day. 

JW: You excel across various creative mediums (shaping surfboards, photography, surfing, creative direction). How do you find your creative balance between these disciplines? What do you want to express through all of this?
DP: Well, thank you for the kind words. It's no easy task juggling the multitude of things that I've set out to do with and for myself. And I'm still looking to find a balance to it all. If I’m being honest, I struggle with that, and am continually striving towards "balance." And there are days when one avenue of my creative side fuels another and other days when things don't flow. That's all part of the creative process, though. I'm drawn to the challenge, and if this stuff were easy, I probably wouldn't be doing any of it. I work tremendously hard at everything I do and find a way to carve my path, figuring out things on my own time and in my way. Call me stubborn, but that is just how I do my thing. I'm still figuring out what I want to express precisely; maybe it's the desire to never genuinely want to grow up. However, I enjoy making high-quality tangible objects using my hands and want to have fun doing so daily. Whether it's conceptualizing a shoot and bringing it to fruition top to bottom, from photographing it, developing the film and scanning it, or grabbing a blank and hacking into it with a planer to make some bizarre aquatic toy that gives myself or others joy. I wake up daily, follow my gut, and go in the direction that calls to me the loudest. Ultimately, I'm incredibly fortunate to be someone who can make a living from my passions, and there's just a ton of stuff that's bottled away inside of me, and I'm looking to come out with it all.   

JW: Malibu holds a unique place in surfing history, having nurtured countless iconic figures who have left an indelible mark. Did you realize it when you first paddled out into the waves at Malibu? And what about Now?
DP: I started surfing when I was twelve years old under the watchful eye of my father, Don, who was also a very widely respected surfer and shaper in his day. Dad shared with me his vast knowledge of the fabled pointbreak and all the legends that caresses the waves face there years prior, but I was just a spastic little toe-headed grom with a loud mouth looking to excrete joy from the ocean. Now that I'm in my early forties, it's a different story, and I am fully aware of the people I was surfing with in those early days of venturing out to the point. Mainly Lance Carson, Denny Aaberg, the younger generation of that time (the early 90s), Josh Farberow, Jimmy Gamboa, and Brittany Leonard. The lines they were drawing, the noseriding that was going down. Memories of those early sessions repeat like re-runs of Seinfeld. Never getting stale, always bringing a sparkle to my eye and a smile. Those surfers were and still are genuinely a delight to witness, and I'm honored to have befriended each of them over the years. 

JW: How long have you been pursuing your passions as a creative?
DP: It all started in about 1998/1999. I was in my late teens and was lucky enough to be regularly featured in various print media publications and surf films of that era. But I remember feeling like most of what I saw in print differed from the experiences I shared with my surfing peers. There was so much more going on; the imagery felt repetitive, and nearly everything was front-lit, hyper-tight, shot on a 6oomm without a drop of water out of place. That style of work can be incredible, and like I said before, there was so much more going on that should be seen and showcased. It could have been more relatable to what we were doing and experiencing as surfers. I realized that most photographers let magazine editors dictate how they approach their work, but they needed to have their own voice. There were a lot of wasted opportunities to capture images in more dynamic lighting or by utilizing different focal lengths to encompass the overall vibration of the surfing experience. I was conversing with Thomas Campbell shortly after the Japanese premiere of his epic surf flick "The Seedling" about how I felt and that he was one of the only artists in my network at the time who had a genuinely unique perspective of our little logging subculture. After hearing my gripes, he urged me to pick up a camera and have a crack at telling the visual stories I wanted to see myself. Shortly after that trip, per his advice, I picked a Nikon FM2 with a 50mm and a 300mm lens and began burning through rolls of film, making tons of mistakes along the way. Each of those mistakes kept me driven to do better, learn more, continue trying new things, and develop my own unique methods of creative storytelling. 

JW: Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for the future? What do you hope to create or achieve with JULY and your other creative endeavors?
DP: Moving forward, I'm excited to continue pushing our products' design elements and high-quality nature with the immensely talented group of unique individuals who have become a part of JULY. It's been beautiful to witness how they inspire and push one another to be the best versions of themselves, in and out of the water. I'm looking forward to creating new ways to showcase their unique facets. In the last twelve months, we have also finally started seeing real progress in producing more eco-friendly materials that adhere to our quality standards, and we are looking forward to releasing some of those products later this year or early into 2025. I've already exceeded any expectations I had when embarking on this project. The world is in a crazy period of life, so I'd like to continue supporting true-life individuals who are passionate about being their genuine selves and share the love of surfing. Time will tell about my other creative endeavors. I will continue following my gut instincts and see where this wild journey called life takes me.