Waves... WOW
May 11, 2013 2:23 PM   Subscribe

 
Gorgeous! Thanks.
posted by ambrosia at 2:31 PM on May 11, 2013


Direct link to the Laughing Squid post, for posterity.

They reminded me of Clark Little's photos (previously).
posted by filthy light thief at 2:36 PM on May 11, 2013


want!
posted by Maias at 2:50 PM on May 11, 2013


Great lighting, fast shutter
very nice
posted by caddis at 2:55 PM on May 11, 2013


My entire department will be stealing these hard for this season's wave energy conferences.
posted by biffa at 3:22 PM on May 11, 2013


How beautiful!

The only problem I have with these photos is that I keep hitting my head on the monitor.
posted by Room 641-A at 3:28 PM on May 11, 2013


does anyone know if waves are as striated as they look? they seem to be kind of columnar.
posted by sineater at 3:44 PM on May 11, 2013


does anyone know if waves are as striated as they look?

Apparently he spends hours getting them to pose.
posted by Mario Speedwagon at 4:06 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


#3883 reminds me of the waves in The Last Unicorn, as the unicorns are about to break free of the waves.
posted by Windigo at 4:41 PM on May 11, 2013


Reminds me that it's time to get out some Sex Wax and give the log a good rubbing. And if there's any time or energy left, maybe go do some surfing.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 5:04 PM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


Awesome!

This is so completely and joyfully reminiscent of taking my old russian camera out into knee deep water for high school photography classes and just waiting for the shore break to kick. Then snapping a shot and jumping with the camera held high in my hand every time a slightly larger wave came along. Always trying to make small surf look bigger, but being betrayed in the prints by the beautiful texture of water in movement. Up close and frozen on film, that texture is always going to provide enough detail to show that that a 2 foot dumper isn't G-land.

Though as a minor criticism, the general similarity of shape and form does make me kind of wonder whether he's not too fixed on the moment when a wave starts to wrap into a barrel. No biggie, it is one of the most wonderful moments in the surf, and I still can't find it hard to resist doing something similar with landscape images in hilly country (always a peak roughly centre, then a little bit of a valley, then another smaller rise at 2/3 and a long slow slide to bottom right). Maybe it's just the fact that a form can get stuck somewhere deep in your head as ideal, and you end up finding and taking essentially the same photo of it over and over again.

Sineater, not sure whether you're using striated and columnar as scientific terms there, but the conventional surfer's explanation for breaking waves getting gnarly (which is a totally scientific term, dude) used to be that slight differences in bottom topography apply drag to the bottom of the wave at differing rates, and that in turn causes it to stack up and break at different rates along the line. So what you're seeing as a set of columns as you look down the line of the wave could well be an effect created by little coral outcrops on the bottom, or ridges in the sand, or small stones, or any difference in bottom formation. But I suspect advances in fluid dynamics have immensely complicated that theory, and I am no scientimathemagician..
posted by Ahab at 6:11 PM on May 11, 2013


This increased my fear of the ocean by a factor of 10. DNW.
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 9:36 PM on May 11, 2013


When that first link came up, my jaw quite literally dropped. These are amazing.

I mean, really dropped open. Head moved forward, sharp intake of breath, the whole thing. I can't remember the last time that happened.
posted by drhydro at 11:40 PM on May 11, 2013


This guy is totally channeling Katsushika Hosukai. Also, holy focal plane awesomeness.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 12:38 AM on May 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


Waves, nasty shit. Neat photos though.
posted by adamvasco at 4:27 AM on May 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


This kind of photography just makes my jaw drop because unlike a lot of other photography I see I know I couldn't do this myself no matter how much money I spent on equipment.
posted by dmd at 12:06 PM on May 12, 2013


Daft motherfuckers being outside the ship's superstructure during conditions like that without life preservers. Nice find regardless, adamvasco.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 8:34 PM on May 12, 2013


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