Bravo.
Those brave men and women who shoot images of our surfing from watery angles have always impressed me most. But who, amongst us, hasn’t been influenced by their work from the earliest ages? The intimacy, the closeness that only brave man, or woman, bobbing in the brine, sometimes extremely heavy, with heavy camera and fins can bring.
It takes guts. Guts and an eye for art and a knowledge of surf and strong legs and strong arms and a stout heart.
Daniel Russo, Jimmy “Cane” Wilson, Brent and Brian Bielmann, Peter Taras, Damea Dorsey, Ben Thouard, but to name a very few, have made their mark in the space with Thouard just winning the coveted Ocean Photographer of the Year award.
The Frenchman’s intoxicating picture of surfer getting pounded at Teahupo’o beat out a colorful squid, sea otter in school of fish, even more colorful squid, sea snake all tied up in knots, sea turtle being chill and silly crab.
A worthy honor.
Examine all of the photographs here but most examine Thouard’s. Who do you think the surfer is? The only certainty is who it is not.
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many of the photogs retire from surf/water shots and now concentrate on PR images & portraits for the enviro-movement…here’s my top selection.
https://sadanduseless.b-cdn…
If you have a world title and make 7 figures, ya better damn sure as hell charge Chopes and Pipe. One has not and it’s embarrassing. There is an asterisk on the title this year.
Pip’s title is fucked up too.
Bill Murray.
Triggered
much blab ’bout him harassing the other actors…Bill is the jeebus of satirists, only 2nd to our blogMaster surf journalist,
ChadChasCertainly not the current world champion.
Think of all of the comments you would have gotten from this piece of writing if you would’ve just mentioned, ben marcus…
Looks good.
Well how many books have you written? How many surf tabloids have you launched? The “haven’t done it so can’t riff” line leads nowhere. I so appreciate you here based on you and your opinion. That makes for fun.
When I was a kid I was told by my older friends to not compete in surfing because I didn’t have family in the judges booth. Favoritism is rampant in competitive surfing. This years schedule favored toledo. Its sad because its not just a sport or an art. Its a passion. Something that has saved us from our worst selves. So in that circus of sponsors and sales it would be nice if there could at least be some respect to the surfing world. Crown a real champ!!
Brilliant – working in a Pip burn to this article is 10/10 on the snark-o-meter.
The pic of old mate in angle pose getting flogged at tea-a-hoo-poo-o is great.
Millions of sea creatures, thousand seascapes and the winning image is a shot of a human and his plastic wave toy. Way to go, conservationists.
P*ps latest YouTube edit is titled “Peace & Power“. Yes power. It’s 3 min of him telling us how much he deserves his *title.
Sick burn, dude.
Hard to imagine any photo of a beating could beat this one (yeah I know, different year)
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
same wave as the winner photo. different angle.
A preview of the Iranian Olympic surf team at Chopes.
Steph?