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Bob Jones |
If I die today,
it’s fine—I’ve lived a good and full
life. The ocean has given me so much. One day it will
need to take and I will give.
Hawaii surf photographer Jon Mozo wrote those words
before he died at age 33 of head injuries while doing
a water shoot at the big-wave Pipeline on the north
shore of Oahu in February 2005.
Surfing photography and cinematography are extremely
physical artistic jobs, not for the faint-of-heart camera
enthusiast or the no-risk-taker. It helps to be an unusually
strong swimmer, a competitive athlete, a former water
polo player and someone who’s been in the big
swells since what’s called in Hawaiian-style pidgin
“small-kid time.”
Which describes one of the best of the current water
workers, Don King.
If you can handle the pounding and unforgiving near-shore
waves of Makapu’u Beach as a body surfer when
you are 5 years old—that’s when King started,
with his father’s supervision—you likely
can handle anything that comes bigger and later, as
King, ’83, did.
He was among the first to discover how to get right
into the wave with the surfer in order to capture above-and-below
images. Consistently rated among the 10 best water photographers,
he branched out from surf magazines to Hollywood: shooting
footage for Endless Summer 2, Blue Crush,
Riding Giants, the James Bond movie Die
Another Day, that sequence of Tom Hanks thrashing
in the water as his makeshift raft sank off Fiji in
Castaway. Recently he’s been working
as cinematographer for the ABC series Lost.
King got hooked on surf photography when he was 14.
But the photos he sent to magazines were rejected. “I
thought my pictures were much better than they were.”
There was a big breakthrough while he was still in high
school. Surfing Magazine took one of his photos
for a cover and paid him $350.
“Photography has allowed me a lifestyle out of
the box,” says King, 46, a resident of Lanikai,
Hawaii. “And I think Stanford prepared me well
for that in terms of being open and creative about approaching
problems or situations.” A psychology major, King
played on the water polo team—mostly on the bench,
he says—that won the ncaa championship three of
his five years on the Farm. He joined Delta Tau Delta,
which King says “was great because it was a lot
of nonconformists. A big clubhouse of friends.”
There’s fun involved in being out there in the
big waves with the boarders you’re shooting—and
risk. King has had only one really close call. It was
an encounter with a surfboard that had a hydrofoil wing
extending well below the water surface.
“Normally, I can dive down under a surfboard quickly
and get out of the way, even if they run me over, which
happens quite a lot. This time, the jet ski tow-in operator
drove right by me and obscured my view of the foil.
The foil guy might not have seen me until the jet ski
passed. I then saw that the foil was lined up straight
on me, so I went down as fast as I could, but my leg
wasn’t deep enough. It hit my ankle; that knocked
the guy out of his boots and off the board. I got a
few stitches, that was all.”
King says surf photography is “extremely rewarding,
although not financially. I think some combat photographers
probably have similar passions about what they do. The
thrill of capturing the moment in such high-energy situations
and the personal risk only heighten the feeling.”
Still, his work has taken a new direction, King says
in an interview at the ocean-view house shared with
his wife, Julianne, and sons Beau, Aukai and Dane. “I
feel I’ve gone from just creating an image to
telling a story.”
He’s done that by going into movies, and by throwing
himself into a documentary called Beautiful Son,
the story of his and Julianne’s efforts to work
with their youngest son, 6-year-old Beau, who is autistic.
Nearing completion, the film shows scenes with Beau
before and after age 2 1⁄2, when the once bright
and happy boy started to regress. It includes interviews
with parents who have had some success with recovery
efforts. The couple started the project with their own
money but enlisted the fund-raising help of legendary
surfer and good friend Laird Hamilton, who in June crossed
the English Channel on a paddle board for the cause.
King got into Hollywood work through a word-of-mouth
recommendation to the producers of Endless Summer
2. Then came a surf sequence shot at “Jaws”
beach on Maui for Die Another Day—where
James Bond and two colleagues supposedly are landing
on a North Korea beach by surfboard. King and another
water worker, Sonny Miller, were selected to do the
ocean shots for the popular surf movies Blue Crush
and Riding Giants.
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WATERWORKS: King shoots for magazines,
movies, commercials and ABC’s Lost. |
Don King |
Water cinematography has its own challenges. Photographers
on land, in boats or in helicopters can use light meters
to get an exposure reading, but King has to rely on
his instincts. “I just know what the exposure
should be,” he says. It’s also an exercise
in getting it right the first time: the situation won’t
be repeated. And for movie shots, such as the Castaway
scene with Hanks in the water, a lot of production money
was riding on King’s doing it on the first try.
He did.
His work on Lost has been the most difficult
transition. “I was used to being totally independent,”
King says. “I’d find the shot and shoot
it, sort of documentary style. Now, somebody wants the
camera moved two inches this way or that way. There’s
rehearsal and all the setups for the shots. But I enjoy
it, I really do.”
He’s also signed on more and more to shoot commercials.
“It’s short-term work, meaning I can spend
a lot of time with my family, and that’s important
to me,” King explains. “It also allows for
a lot of artistic creativity,” he notes.
“But I still get back in the water,” says
King, who rates himself as “a terrible board surfer”
but as a good, competitive body surfer who won a meet
at Pipeline. “I’ve always felt so comfortable,
so capable in the water. I enjoy being close to intense,
powerful waves. Ideally, I’d like to be able to
just fly around next to the waves, right inside the
tube.
“I want to be in the big waves and surfing when
I’m 60.” |
