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Jordy Smith, varial on the way in, Gold Coast

Yesterday, the sand pump behind Snapper Rocks turned on. After being shut off due to debris clogging (care of some serious storm activity in recent weeks), the pump somehow cleared up and starting belting grains into the ocean to drift around the point. This is good news for competitors, viewers and contest organisers.

“Fuck all this running around Rainbow Bay and Kirra,” says photog Ryan Mille, who shot this sequence of Jordy Smith on his last wave of a late afternoon session yesterday. “The event workers must be pulling their hair out setting up all that equipment in a new location every single day. Jordy was out last night at Snapper and was giving those waves hell. The shit he was doing would have made most surfers tremble and feel sorry for his boards. These photos were from when he was on his way in on a little left where most people would have been riding on their bellies this time. You think he feels comfortable out there?”


Photographer profile

Ryan Miller/ www.redbull.com/surfing

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.”

Visit Ryan Miller/ www.redbull.com/surfing's site here

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