Surf Photography in Rio de Janeiro

 

A bushy bushy blond hairdo

I always was a Big Town Boy since I can remember. I was always living in a near dry city with pools to swim and the sea was a dream left only for summers. So I began a love & hate relation with the sea. The Pacific Ocean on the chilean coast is very cold thanks to the Humboldt currents. So, when you are a kid in my country it means you already are a hero suffering the test of swimming in frozen water. I left the ocean bathing when I was 18 and I decided to leave it for the warm pools.
But I always was longing the sea, the waves, the dark metallic blue of the winter. The dark waters of the sea of the end of the world.
And then, I came to live in Brazil, with warm Atlantic waters the whole year. With sun in every season. And surfers crossing the coast with "A bushy bushy blond hairdo". Some of them just with normal dark hair.

The word surf according to the Surf e Today website:

"linguists believe that the word "surf" has its origins in the late 17th century, apparently from obsolete "suff", meaning "the shoreward surge of the sea". The language specialists underline that "suff" might have been influenced by the spelling of "surge"."

Then Wikipedia assets that:

"For hundreds of years, surfing was a central part of ancient Polynesian culture. Surfing may have first been observed by British explorers at Tahiti in 1767. Samuel Wallis and the crew members of HMS Dolphin were the first Britons to visit the island in June of that year. Another candidate is the botanist Joseph Banks[2] being part of the first voyage of James Cook on HMS Endeavour, who arrived on Tahiti on 10 April 1769. Lieutenant James King was the first person to write about the art of surfing on Hawaii when he was completing the journals of Captain James Cook upon Cook's death in 1779."

Even a specific genre of music known as Surf Music appears in the 50's and causes faints and shouts from teenagers and adults across the world till the 60's. Then it has a revival thanks to the Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (check on Spotify). On these days, you can listen Jack Johnson music and revive the days near the sea.

I have been fascinated with the sea and the surfers since my days near the cold Pacific Ocean. And then I did not use to take pictures so often. But now I do and I have a lot of them to show you how I have been portraying these particular characters of Rio de Janeiro, plenty of them, as common as the foreigners visiting.
In color and black and white.
Sea and handsome men all around.

Listen the playlist of Pulp Fiction here and watch them.

 

Behind the Scenes

Did you liked the pictures? You can check a lot more on my Instagram or my Photography Blog.
As always, made with love and Photoshop (Sometimes Lightroom too)