Powerful: Chris Burkard Just Spoke at TED!

The surf-adventure photographer on "the joys of surfing ice-cold water!" Wait, there's joy?

You know what a TED conference is, yeah? Okay, I’ll imagine y’don’t. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design). And it’s a series of conferences that take place around the world. Real prestigious. Presidents, Nobel Prize winners, all sorts of cats get on the mic.

With a max of 18 minutes talk time under their belt, some of the most compelling human beings (and yeah, some spectacular bores, too, but mostly it’s good) sound off in a sing-song story-telling style on science and culture.

And, just released, is the speech the 29-year-old Californian photographer Chris Burkard made on “the joy of surfing in ice-cold water.

There’s joy surfing when it’s cold? Who knew!

Let’s dip into the speech midway: “It wasn’t until I traveled to Norway — (Laughter) — that I really learned to appreciate the cold. So this is the place where some of the largest, the most violent storms in the world send huge waves smashing into the coastline. We were in this tiny, remote fjord, just inside the Arctic Circle. It had a greater population of sheep than people, so help if we needed it was nowhere to be found. I was in the water taking pictures of surfers, and it started to snow. And then the temperature began to drop. And I told myself, there’s not a chance you’re getting out of the water. You traveled all this way, and this is exactly what you’ve been waiting for: freezing cold conditions with perfect waves. And although I couldn’t even feel my finger to push the trigger, I knew I wasn’t getting out. So I just did whatever I could. I shook it off, whatever. But that was the point that I felt this wind gush through the valley and hit me, and what started as this light snowfall quickly became a full-on blizzard, and I started to lose perception of where I was. I didn’t know if I was drifting out to sea or towards shore, and all I could really make out was the faint sound of seagulls and crashing waves.

“Now, I knew this place had a reputation for sinking ships and grounding planes, and while I was out there floating, I started to get a little bit nervous. Actually, I was totally freaking out — (Laughter) — and I was borderline hypothermic, and my friends eventually had to help me out of the water. And I don’t know if it was delirium setting in or what, but they told me later I had a smile on my face the entire time.

Watch Chris belt out his speech here.