Hang Ten Spray (2001) Photograph by Gary Moger

Cornwall, England, 2013

I am in the water, chest-deep in the Atlantic, when he steps to the nose. Ten toes over the edge, arms loose at his sides, the whole weight of him trusting the wave entirely. The longboard disappears beneath the chop and for a moment he simply stands — suspended between the green wall rising behind him and the white water exploding around my lens.

All around me the inside wave is closing out. Foam and spray scatter in every direction, the surface broken into a thousand fragments of light and motion — shards of white thrown forward, water pulling back over itself, the whole churning interior of a wave caught in the instant before it flattens to nothing. I am inside it. The chaos fills the foreground, swallowing the lower frame, cold and immediate and alive.

I push the ISO high. The grain comes in like static, like sea-spray, threading itself through his silhouette until he and the ocean are made of the same thing. The pale Cornish sky holds everything flat and quiet above the chaos below. He is perfectly still. The world around him is not.

This photograph was used as a full-page advertisement in a surfing magazine.

It is printed on Hahnemühle Photo rag archival paper — every stage of the process done entirely by me. What you receive is a piece of work made with complete personal investment, from the moment I pressed the shutter standing in the surf, to the print that arrives with you.

Materials used:

Nikon, Hahnemuhle Bamboo Archival paper

Details:

• Photograph on Paper
• From a limited edition of 50
• Size: 45.72 x 40.64 x 0.25cm (unframed) / 40.64 x 37.13cm (actual image size)
• Signed and numbered certificate of authenticity
• Style: Photorealistic
• Subject: Landscapes, sea and sky
• Hurry, only 1 left in stock