Photographer s career broke open all of a sudden, just like one of the thick waves that rises up against the North Shore of Oahu and slams into the sand. After a British web site sent out a newsletter with a link to some of his images, his life turned upside down. He appeared on numerous TV shows, exhibited his photography at the Smithsonian museum, opened two galleries, and published a book, . But it was more than three decades of playing in the ocean that set him up for success. The 43-year-old grew up on the North Shore. While his older brother gained fame paddling into the worlds monsters, Clark surfed the shorebreaks. He learned how to read the waves, how to time his ride, and how to fall when he wiped outwhich happened quite a bit. He got a rush from getting tumbled, so it was a bit strange when he took a 9-to-5 job as a keeper at the local botanical garden. He got married, started a family, and then found himself in a situation where his wife needed him to dive back into one of those big waves to take a picture. He jumped right in and got hooked all over again. A few years later he quit his job and decided to shoot full time. Hes been tumbling in the wake of that decision ever since.
View the full photo gallery of Clark Little’s shorebreak photography.
OUTSIDE: How did this all start?
CLARK LITTLE: Its been probably five years or so. The wife brought home a picture of a wave from a place called Pictures Plus. And I said, Honey, dont buy that picture. It was a shorebreak wave that somebody shot from land. I was like, Ill go in there and Ill get a nice big wave. Ill get a killer shot for the wall of our house.
I had this small little camera, a point-and-shoot . I took my first photos of some shorebreaks using a little housing. Back then it was just one shot at a time, and it would hesitate before youd shoot. And Id get beat up. I played around in the shorebreak for a month or two and got some cool looks and shared it with my family and friends. No one was really doing it at that time. After two months I ended up investing $4,000 for a housing, a camera, and a nice fisheye lens.
