“What the fuck?!?”

I was walking the Huntington Beach Pier with AM and the kids when I made this image.  The surfer in the picture was doing a run when all of a sudden it was almost like he was yanked back by some invisible force.  He started screaming at the pier and shaking his fists like a madman.  It caught me so off guard that I immediately made the picture.  An instant later he was smashed into the ocean, a wave sneaking up behind him and crashing over his head.  

When he came up he started yelling at me.  At least I thought he was yelling at me.  When I looked down the pier I understood what had happened.  There was a couple fishing who had moved down the pier–pretty close to the beach and they had their lines cast long into break.  When I looked closely, I could see what looked like at least twenty lines cast off the pier flooding the waves that were rolling in below.  

The surfer was still yelling at/near me so I gestured at my camera and then at the fishing couple slightly cowering by a bench, pretending to be invisible.  Then I made the universal sign for fishing by putting my camera over and behind my head and then making as though I were casting it out over the ocean.  Fuck if I’m going to take the fall for them.  The surfer must have gotten the message because he paddled over to the lines, pulled a knife out from near his ankle and started cutting the lines one after another.  The couple who had cast them stopped cowering, pounced to the railing and started yelling at the surfer in some unknown language–gesturing almost as loudly with their hands in large sweeping motions punctuated with staccato stabs of their fingers. 

The surfer just stared at back at this hysteria in what could only be described as exasperated awe.  Then, he shook his fists at the sky and yelled, “What the fuck?!?” before cutting the last line, stowing his knife and paddling out to another wave leaving the fishing couple and their fringe of cut lines blowing in the wind. 

Shot on a Mamiya 6MF at 50mm on Kodak Tri-X 400 pushed to 800 by the lovely folks at the Icon.