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Photographer Everton Luis and surfers Craig Anderson, Alex Knost, and Ozzie Wright sat at anchor on the aft of the good ship Star Koat, trying to come up with an interesting way to photograph the Mentawai experience. Within sight, across the channel from Thunders, the tide was draining off the Rags Right reef like God himself had pulled the plug. Even at high tide, Rags Reef is dicey. But Everton knew that a dropping tide at Rags Rights turns the water to liquid crystal.
Inspired by Ozzie’s concept of seeing what fish would see, Everton suggested they go for it—but only if Everton could shoot the entire session from underwater. To make it even more interesting, Everton had each member of the crew select a distinct craft. One single-fin, one fish, and one thruster. An hour later, with only six waves ridden between them, the reef was too hairy to continue and they all paddled back to the boat.
Single The first wave ridden. Alex Knost on his beloved single-fin pintail semi-gun. Like observing a moving wind tunnel, this underwater angle gives us a supreme opportunity to examine the dynamics of the single-fin design: entry point from right rail, pressure release off the left rail at the tail, pressure-displacement dimples of the contrail, and the perfection of human weight and poise in relation to momentum. Like any disturbance in any atmosphere, the sound must be considered. That eerie, muffled sound when we are underwater as surfers ride past. An instant later [second frame], we can observe an extraordinary interface of the moving elements over a stationary reef. How it allows trajectories and adjustments: a hand just beginning to reach out and connect with the kinetic, the rudder still true, dealing with the pressure, its vortices spinning up and over, evolving into the pursuing turbulence itself.Fish Riding a 5’6″ hull-bottom, classical, full-nosed fish in waves of jacking hollowness, especially over a razor sharp reef, is madness. Craig Anderson took it on, as Everton Luis captured him in a moment of adjustment on the only wave of his session. The fascination with this image begins with the wake: the pulsing cloud-puffs of turbulence, the symmetry of the skipping leash, the vertically-set wooden fins locked in and tracking. Anderson, at the crux of the ride, torques the inside fin, leaving the other almost insignificant as he walks the tightrope between technique and catastrophe.Thruster It was fitting that the sixth and last wave ridden during the session was shot from dead on. Ozzie Wright’s hand in the face of the wave gives us our relationship to the fins: a clawing, stalling instinct in a moment of applied power and weight. Ozzie buries the board into the surface, almost to the nose, and then steps on the gas, pressuring that outside fin to bite into the concave face as he drops for speed, and commits again to that inside rail and home. A globe of air seen from an airless perspective.
