"When you’re on the beach with a camera you’re a spectator, you’re a tourist. When you’re in the water, you’re involved."
Six months ago, pro surfing fans were readying to mourn the middle brother of the Florence all-boy triumvirate, Nathan Florence, after it was revealed he had caught an untreatable tropical disease, likely in Panama or Mexico.
Which makes Florence’s latest missive, from a Filipino slab wave cranked into life by Super Typhoon Sinlaku, a category 5 cyclone, like heavy, even more remarkable than it first appears.
Florence, along with aura-farming little brother Ivan and larger-than-life water photographer Daniel Russo, solo the deadly blue-water reef, with Russo claiming heart-in-the-mouth-looking-into-the-tube, wide-angle shot unseen since the advent of the POV GoPro a decade ago.
The shots came at a cost, howevs, Russo getting rolled, cut to hell, and, according to Russo’s brief messages, “Broke my back at that wave.”
Russo, if you didn’t know, is a master of his art, a monster of water photography.
“When you’re on the beach with a camera you’re a spectator, you’re a tourist,” he told me. “When you’re in the water, you’re involved. You belong to the moment. It’s like a painter spends hours on a single brushstroke just to get it right. Water photography is definitely an artform. And there’s a very select group of people who being in this niche, as an artist.”
Truly essential.