Off the Wall

I captured this image on my first trip to the North Shore of Oahu in the winter of 2023. I had been photographing several professional surfers at the surf break called Off the Wall. The sets, like this one, had waves with about 15 foot faces. While there were some waves peeling just enough for a quick ride, many others were monstrous closeouts. If you look at the base of this wave, you’ll see a yellowish color. That’s the bottom. On this stretch of the beach near Pipeline, the waves were breaking onto the reef that was only about 5 feet deep. Like nearly all of the surf breaks along the North Shore in winter, this was truly a wave of consequence.