Hazardous Positioning

The high risk, high reward of Zak Noyle’s water photography.
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Waimea Bay, February 25, 2016: The Eddie. Dawn had just broken on the North Shore, illuminating a massive swell sweeping through Hawaii’s outer reefs. A cloud of ocean spray hung in the morning air. In just a few hours, all hell would break loose in a display of bravado and terror. 

For spectators, the 2016 Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational was one for the books. But no one, with the exception of the surfers competing, had the vantage point of photographer Zak Noyle. With nothing more than a pair of swim fins, a camera, and testicular fortitude, Noyle chronicled the carnage by swimming into the lineup of Code Black Waimea. When shit went down, and it did, he was prepared—as best anyone can be when staring down a closed-out lineup at the Bay. 

Koa Smith, Tahiti. I envisioned this photo and had been trying to get it for a long time. Just to be able to get this shot required a lot of different factors. The swell had to be really west in order for the wave to bend out wide enough to fit the surfer and myself inside the barrel. And the swell couldn’t be too big, otherwise I’d get caught in a spot I really don’t want to be. 
Noah Beschen, BSR Cable Park, Texas. It’s kind of weird to shoot in a wave pool, because you know right where something’s going to happen and when it’s going to happen. So you can really visualize how you want to shoot and position yourself exactly how you want to. In the ocean, that’s rarely possible. We’re going to see a whole new breed of photographers coming out of the pools one day, who are able to do things we haven’t even thought about. 
Koa Rothman, Pipeline. There are so many variables when it comes to shooting at Pipe. Everything is constantly changing and moving and it’s all happening at a speed that a photo doesn’t always tell. With this shot, and with the way that the lighting was as the sun was setting, I wanted to slow the photograph down in order to reflect how fast things actually move out there when you’re in the water. 

The images he captured while swimming proved to be jaw-droppingly, death-defyingly classic Noyle: peak moments, shot as close to the action as humanly possible. “For me,” he recalls, “being asked to be the water photographer for the event was the biggest honor of my life, hands down. To be involved in an event that honors the legacy of one Hawaii’s most respected watermen means so much to me. It was gnarly swimming out there, for sure, but I felt like I was a part of something bigger than myself and I think that’s what it’s all about.”

As the son of one of Hawaii’s most successful commercial photographers, Noyle relished an idyllic upbringing in Honolulu. When he wasn’t failing photography classes at Punahou School (true story), he could be found, like so many others, cruising at Sandy Beach. It was here, along this stretch of neck-snapping coastline in southeastern Honolulu, that Noyle’s passion for photography began
to blossom.

“There’s something about the light at Sandy’s,” he says, “and the way that the wave stacks onto nearly dry sand that’s addictive. Everybody in Town loves Sandy’s. I don’t think you can spend a lot of time there and not walk away without being impressed by the beauty of the place. I think being immersed in that lineup really did help open my eyes to shooting water photography. It also taught me how to take a beating. Sandy’s will clean you out everytime, guaranteed.” 

Mason Ho at The Eddie, Waimea Bay, 2016. I was fortunate enough to be asked to shoot The Eddie in both 2009 and 2016. In 2016, I didn’t get out of the water for eight hours. The event hadn’t happened for seven years and who knows when it could happen again. I didn’t want to go in to even get something to eat or drink really fast, because I didn’t want to miss the best wave of the day. It was such an honor to be a part of The Eddie and I wasn’t going to miss a second of it. Every time it runs, it’s historic. 
Alex Knost, Witch’s Rock, Costa Rica. I don’t generally shoot small waves or longboarding, so this was a different kind of trip for me. Alex is so stylish and that let me try stuff in the water I don’t normally get to—whether it’s angles or positioning. When I’m shooting heavy or big waves, the surf creates most of the drama in an image. But here, the surfer and the light take over. 
Noyle, in his preferred studio setting at Pipeline. Photo by Yusuke Kobayashi.

In the months following his high school graduation, Noyle had a lens practically welded to his hand. An adept swimmer, he felt comfortable in impact zones, dodging the mountains of water cascading overhead and the reef below, all the while never losing sight of his subject. Eventually, he moved on to shooting the harrowing lineup at Pipeline, often pushing for deeper, more extreme angles, and thus building on the lineage of water photography at the world’s deadliest wave. 

Soon, photo editors from mainland surf publications began to take notice. Finding a photographer able to hold his composure in life-threatening situations isn’t easy—and the kid was capturing the goods. First, Transworld picked him up. Not long afterward, he moved on to Surfer magazine, producing numerous covers, spreads, and features. 

The backside of Diamond Head, shot from a helicopter. You can see right where I grew up in Honolulu. This photo just feels like Hawaii. 
Clyde Aikau at the opening ceremony for The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational, 2016. Clyde is a legend just like his brother and you can feel the power of his yell. I had chicken skin while I was out in the Bay shooting the paddle out, just knowing how special that moment was.
Mikala Jones, Off The Wall. I always want to make sure the waves in my photographs are as true as can be to what they are in real life. Here, the wave is so big and round. I wanted to use a normal lens to capture how wide the barrel truly is. My job is to capture moments, not to manipulate them. 

As Noyle’s career as a water photographer grew, so too did the rise of social media. Although then in its infancy, platforms like Instagram opened a route for Noyle’s work to be broadcast to the mainstream, outside of surfing. Suddenly, his profile was bubbling over with followers and his awe-inspiring body of work quite literally went viral. Big clients, like Apple, came calling.

“I’ve been lucky enough in my career to be in the right spot at the right time,” Noyle says. “But you don’t get to that spot without working for it. I love being able to connect with my followers. It wasn’t that long ago, really, that we had to wait 30 or 40 days from when the photo was shot to see it in a mag. Now, I can shoot it on my phone and upload it from the water, 30 or 40 seconds after I take it.” 

The man’s found his niche: a place somewhere between the falling lip and the reef, where documenting elemental moments and high-risk environments combines with Silicon Age technology.

Unidentified, Kandui. These were some of the best waves that I’ve ever seen. It was all-out firing, like Pipe on steroids. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky all day and our crew was so sunbaked and fried when we came in. It’s such a long wave, which made it difficult to position myself on the reef to shoot from the water. But the trouble was worth it, especially to get conditions like this.
Tom Dosland, Kandui. I was shooting with a normal lens to try and capture this angle in a unique way. This was an incredible moment—how fast Tom was going in the barrel and how blue the water was.
Nathan Florence, Tahiti. This was at last light. I like when a wave can fill a full frame—it really pulls the viewer into it. This shot reflects how stylish and comfortable Nathan is in heavy waves. The dark, tinted elements of this shot are there at the edges because this is the very last moment before I got pulled under the wave, and I’m trying to avoid going over with it. 

[Feature image: Nathan Fletcher, Pipeline. Shooting in the water at heavy waves, especially at Pipeline, can be really dangerous. Getting stuck inside of a closeout, or going over the falls, will put you in a load of trouble because the waves are so powerful—it’s a top to bottom thrashing. Plus the reef is right there. I do my best to not let those things happen, though sometimes it’s unavoidable. But this is my job and I’m not going to compromise anything for the shot.]

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