See the 7 Seas Through a Surf Photographer’s Lens

In his new book “The Oceans: The Maritime Photography of Chris Burkard,” renowned adventure and surf photographer Chris Burkard shares approximately 250 photos he captured during 15 years of exploring far-off corners of the globe like the Kuril Islands, Faroes and Tahiti. Burkard, who was on the scene in Iceland in 2021 when a volcano erupted in the Geldingadalur region of the Reykjanes Peninsula, is also dedicated to exposing climate change, and The Oceans is meant to serve as a call to action to preserve our oceans and and protect what is becoming an increasingly fragile planet. The following eight photographs are from the book and feature his commentary about the image. 

This is a Nicaraguan sunset. Shooting empty waves has always been a passion of mine. It’s one of the things that I love the most about ocean sports. In skateboarding, you’re not shooting a curb and posting a photo of a curb on your wall or something. I think the fact we can appreciate empty waves within surf culture is amazing. I love that we can kind of mind-surf and dream about it. This is one of those mind-surfing situations and it kind of sums up the Central American surfing experience.

This is somebody torpedoing out of the back of a wave in Tahiti. I photographed this as a part of a film for Patagonia that was called Plight of The Torpedo People. It was about bodysurfing. One of the things you can do when you bodysurf is ride the current of a breaking wave in reverse and let it suck you up and shoot you out the back like a dolphin. This person is dolphin-ing here. I wasn’t really aiming for this, but it just happened and came to life. It was a wild moment.

This is a photo of a glacial river mouth in Iceland in a town called Hofn. This is looking down from a small Cessna about 2,000 feet in the air and I’m shooting out the window as the plane is banking really hard to the right. I’m using a circular polarizer to cut through the reflection of the water and show those milky patterns. What you’re seeing is all the glacial sediment that separates where the ocean meets the river. It’s just an abstract perspective that I’ve loved over the years. I’ve found you have to get in the sky to showcase the unique perspectives of the sea and how it interacts with the land around it.

This is right by my house in Big Sur off the coast of California. I shot this last winter from a small Cessna. Normally you’d be up there shooting the dramatic coastline, but in this situation it was the sky and the rain that was fascinating. It’s coming down and in the distance you can see a water spout, which is crazy. It’s an incredible place, and it was a rad location to be able to shoot and grow up and cut my teeth. This is a special one because this is where I started my journey in photography as a kid wanting to go surf and take pictures.

This is a wild mountain range that sticks up right out of the sea. It’s one of the places where the Vikings first settled in the country. It was a cold, grey, February day where typically you’re like, “Oh, it’s gonna be shitty, I’m not gonna get any images at all.” I parked the car, walked over the bluff and these two horses were just walking towards the sea. It was like something out of The Lord of the Rings. They blew my mind and I quickly was just shooting photos. I love the silver tone and the sea doing what it always does and showing you some unique aspects of light you haven’t seen before. That’s always stunning to me.

This is Cuba along the Great Ocean Road. It’s really amazing zone. I was there on a commercial assignment trying to document a catalog for the brand Roark. We tried to surf, but in the downtime, I was just shooting the people. I love the coastal culture and that everybody was swimming in the ocean. I didn’t really shoot until I went swimming for a while. I was just part of the crew. It created and fostered this level of respect and connection. Cuba really taught me a lot about interacting with people who are heavily pressured by photographers trying to capture something. I’ve really thought about that in my career as time has gone on. Their relationship with the ocean is just so beautiful. I loved seeing the kids play all day in the water.

This is on an island off of the coast of Norway in the Lofoten island chain. It’s a really hard-to-get-to spot called Vaeroy. It’s at the end of this beautiful granite chain of mountains that stick out from the Arctic Circle in Norway. I think this one particular view is so stunning because of how it kind of encompasses this beautiful secluded bay and beach. I was just blown away by being there. I had always wanted to go to this island. We sailed there on a boat, which made it even more rad because normally you’d fly or take a little ferry. We actually sailed the whole Lofoten chain and arriving at this final destination was special and felt kind of significant. My mission as a photographer is to be able to educate and share these experiences with others so that they can hopefully foster the same element of love for them as I do.

This is Josh Mulcoy in the Aleutian Islands, this remote island chain that basically extends from Russia to Alaska. It’s a wild place and a place I’d always dreamt of going to for years. I finally went a few years ago and shot an article for SURFER Magazine. This photo is critical to me in my career because it speaks volumes about how hard you work to get to these places. Oftentimes you go and the weather sucks or the waves aren’t good and it just doesn’t work out how you planned. In this situation, it did and everything came to life. Surfing and finding good waves in remote areas is still very much at the core of what I love and this photograph in that place with the clearing sky was a big moment in my career. We saw the volcano maybe one more day, but that was the clearest, best day of photographing we had. It’s a moment that sits with me in my memory bank and in the archive.