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Damo Hobgood, Durban, South Africa

“It always amazes me that even with a Prime event in town you can still surf really good waves just a stone’s-throw from the comp site with less than 10 people out,” says Ryan Miller, currently in Durban for the Mr Price Pro. Stab agrees. You’d think it’d be tough to find seclusion, but the magnetism of a humming contest site usually proves too alluring for most. A fact which found Damo, Ryan and few others surfing this “little runner right off a headland, right next to the comp in which 96 of the best surfers are entered, with a heck-ton of groms running around the beach. The thing breaks off a headland and runs for 100 meters. With only eight people out it looks like just about the most dreamy little right you have ever seen.”


Photographer profile

Ryan Miller

Ryan Miller, 33 years old, does not know how to write a bad email. Your pals at Stab have learnt to live vicariously through Miller’s red wine-fuelled letters from the road. His travels take him to some dreamy locales and, in those places, he scores all-time photos: “My favourite photo I’ve shot was of Benny Bourgeois in the Caribbean, with a fisheye. Often I just take photos, but rarely do I get to make one.” In an age of tail-highs and released fins, Ryan still most likes to shoot someone who can lay-down a big backside turn. Namely: Jordy Smith, Dane Reynolds, Gabe Kling, Kekoa Bacalso, Damien Hobgood and Peter Mendia. Like most photogs, Miller misses Scott Aichner’s work. But, as far as contemporary inspiration? “Trying to see things through my daughter’s eyes. It’s wild to think about someone experiencing something totally new on almost a daily basis when, as adults, we rarely get to experience something truly new.”

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