Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. Or maybe you are looking so closely at the brushstrokes you can’t see the painting. Or alternatively, maybe when you look at Kai Lenny riding a giant Nazare wave, you can’t see the fort.
Or to save both myself and you the reader, maybe it’s better if a picture tells a 1000 words. And with the latest striking image by French photographer Alex Laurel of Kai Lenny’s Biggest Wave Award Winner, it offers a new perspective to see what it takes to ride a 70-foot wave at Nazare.
Now we’ve seen this wave plenty of times before. Ridden in the Nazare Tow Challenge it was broadcast live. Then as an entry in the Big Wave Awards, and subsequent XXL winner, it has been played on repeat for five months.
I was even lucky enough to watch it in person. My own eyeballs relayed the optics to my brain which interpreted the visuals as, “That’s a fucking big wave.” Insightful, as always, my gin soaked synapses.
And having seen it hundred times since that opinion hadn’t changed. Yet it took Laurent’s perspective to add depth, weight and scope to the biggest wave ridden in the last 12 months. The tiny people on the toy fort, Lenny’s four finned track trailing into the barrel, the 50 foot high rocks at the base of the cliff diminished to small chunks of rubble; it all makes for something truly epic.
In this it harks back to the now iconic Sean Davey image of Laird’s Millenium Wave, recently celebrating its 20 year anniversary. Davey had been stuck on shore that morning courtesy of a blocked fuel filter on the boat. With his biggest 300 mm lens trained on the wave, the sights of the arms raised in the boat triggered the alarm.
He pressed the button, yet with Laird out of sight below sea level, had no idea what he had shot. Turns out, after a waiting a few weeks to process the film, he had taken a picture of Laird’s Millennium wave. The pulled back perspective further added more weight to the shots and videos taken from the channel.
In time Laurel’s image may too become iconic. It captures a memorable moment in surfing history, in such a way to tell the whole story.
