Subscribe to SURFER now!
Read more about the making of the Big Issue!

INTO THE THIRD DIMENSION

A 3D PHOTO FEATURE

A different visual experience—that’s what innovative photographers strive for. It’s why, housing in hand, they swim deeper into the pit at Pipe. Why they sacrifice flesh and bone and equipment to hang under a speeding surfer’s rail. Why they scramble over coral and hike over jungle-choked headlands in search of a unique vantage point. It’s why they tinker with their equipment, build $5,000 housings, mount cameras on poles, speed around on skis, and sync remote flashes after dark.

They want to capture surfing as we’ve never seen it before, and really, that’s all the following 3D feature is about—experimentation. It’s just an exercise, an attempt to take surf photos beyond the flat field of a page. Hope you enjoy.

MOLDING CLAY
He’s One of the Most Dynamic Surfers in the World Today, Thanks in Large Part to a Mild Form of Autism
by Chris Mauro and Jake Howard

Clay Marzo has always operated on a different level. He was only seven months old when his mother began to notice. “He never crawled,” Jill Marzo explains. “He just started walking one day at seven months and one week.” But even more than is uncanny coordination, it was Clay’s ability to absorb the tiny details of anything that interested him that impressed his mom the most. “He was more focused on his interests than any kid I’d ever seen, even when he was three years old. It started out with seashells that he’d collect for hours at a time. Then he graduated to these little sea animal toys—he could tell you everything about each one, and later it was all about baseball cards. He had stacks of them, and knew everything on them.”

Dawn in Dakar
A West African Story
By Brian Nevins

It’s those last-minute ideas, slightly off balance in their execution, that eventually get you into moments of “how did I get here” reflection. Without fail, surf travel always renders a certain amount of uncertainty that keeps me on my toes. Deprived of the vitality supplied by those travels, I become grumpy and single-minded. A constant barrage of uncomfortable living provides me a fresh eye and a love for the extraordinary. It keeps me guessing, wondering, and a bit scared—I walked into this life for nothing less, and that’s why I landed in Dakar, Senegal, to look for surf.

Kona Blend
Why Time, Places, and Faces Are Still Shaping the Big Island 
by Kirk Lee Aeder

In early January, a sizeable swell was approaching my home on the Big Island of Hawaii. Unlike other Hawaiian Islands, the Big Island requires a lot of driving, so I hastily traversed the wide, open coastal roads up north to check some of the better mysto spots there. “On the road again” must certainly be the motto for all Big Island surfers, and it’s become mine. The Island’s land mass is twice as large as all the other Hawaiian Islands combined, so there is ground to cover. This is partly natural: Due to the continuous volcanic lava flow from Kilauea, more land gets added every day. Surf spots of the very distant future, no doubt.