Jamie O’Brien, the catcher in the eye of Pipeline, Hawaii

Now, doesn’t the helmut in the foreground of Laserwolf’s camera focus lend another element to this image? That’s Jamie O’Brien being spat out of a wave at the Pipeline, on Hawaii’s North Shore, which is a completely normal thing to see. But that helmut there, in the foreground, gives a sense of what it’s really like to be in the channel. Because if there’s men surfing it, then you can be damn sure there’s water photogs documenting it. Such is life on the North Shore, and it ain’t a thing to complain about, because really, there might be a man behind Laserwolf, taking a photograph of Jamie being spat out, and instead of one helmut in his foreground, there’s two.

Jamie was going switch on every other wave this day. Laserwolf had just kicked into the lineup to capture some of JOB’s casualness. But it wasn’t all peaches. Laserwolf got smoked on the reef during this session, good and proper. “With the direction, guys were sitting really deep for the lefts. I was shooting wide angle so I had to get deeper, too. A sneaker bomb swung wide and broke right in front of me. I had no where to go in just a couple feet of water so I got smoked. Head, shoulder and water housing all over the reef. Funny, cos’ the night before I read an interview with Zak Noyle where he was talking about swimming out to Pipe knowing you’re gonna get smashed. Oh well, could be worse, y’seen Sean Moody’s face?”