John Florence and Kealii Mamala, outer reef, Hawaii

Good surf shots don’t come easy. Sometimes, you take a gamble and draw an ace. Sometimes, not so lucky. Two days ago, the North Shore was battered with a sizeable swell – you may remember a Full Frame of John Florence and his bros Ivan and Nathan prepping their truck-driving boards. The swell did buck and evidently, as seen through the lens of Damien Robertson here, John was in the mix.

What you probably can’t tell from first glance, is that this photo was taken 3.2km away from the reef. Amid a heavy layer of fog, photogs Damien, who’s Jamie O’Brien’s personal photog/filmer, and Blake Kueny, who handles Jordy Smith’s media (among other things), hiked through the mountains for an hour, using the GPS on Blake’s iPhone. “I was terrified of the wild boars,” says Blake. “And Damien, who is a big Hawaiian guy, was bummed that we weren’t hunting. I was like, fuck those things, let’s get out of here (laughs).”

Once they reached a sugar cane field that had a decent vantage point of the reef which, as mentioned, was a little over 3.2km away, Blake and Damien shot for six hours straight, using 1000mm lenses. John John surfed from dawn til 1pm, resulting in the use of five camera batteries per photog (“My first five-battery sesh!” says Blake). Here you see John (on the inside, behind Kealii Mamala) on one of many bombs he stroked into during the session. Kid mos def plays a superlative game.