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Julian Wilson, backside hammer-throw, Reunion Island

Apart from inducing the faint urge to use the title Julian Wilson, Caught from behind, this photograph makes your pals at Stab feel warm and fuzzy inside. Julian’s unnecessary yellow suit planted between that lush green and fluoro blue makes for pop art aesthetics. Plus, we know how good Julian’s backside aerial game is. The reason the kid’s donned rubber during a Red Bull x Stab x Surfing trip to Reunion Island is ’cause his gut, chest and knees are too shredded up from hours in the soup. The heat of a suit in the tropics is more bearable than the sting of a rash, which any surfer knows too well.

The reason Jules and Jordy went to the Island was to surf the righthander you saw in Modern Collective. Now, the more keen observer will notice that Jules is in fact surfing a left in this shot. Why? Ryan Miller explains:

“The swell is up and the wave we came to do punts at is way too big. It isn’t often you wish for less swell on a trip. We packed up the car and headed to St Leu, the famed lefthander and home to many a WT event. The wave looks like the dreamiest soft lefthander for the average surfer like myself.”

Good for the average surf, perfect for the professional surfer.

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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