Surfing Photographer Brian Bielmann

Brian Bielmann is a renowned surf photographer with images appearing in every major surf magazine in the world. “My favorite subject to photograph, for sure, is waves. My favorite place to shoot is Pipeline in the late afternoon from the water, backlit Pipeline, like 8-to10-feet. I love that more than anything. That is definitely my most favorite subject in the whole world.”

Getting the shot in surf photography is “all about reacting and having confidence and not thinking too much,” he says. But it has its risks. One year at Pipeline he ran out of film and signaled for a water patrolman to tow him to shore on a boogie board behind a Jet Ski. It was the water patrolman’s first time pulling a photographer out of large waves, and instead of waiting for a break in the set, he charged forward into a head-high wall of whitewater. The Jet Ski hit the whitewater and went vertical. “So the whitewater hit me. The camera slammed into my face. The driver jumped off the Ski or was thrown off the Ski. The Ski came down and pinned me between the boogie board and the Ski.” As a result, he cracked a quarter-inch piece of plexiglass with his face and looked so monstrous that pictures of his injury appeared in many surf magazines. He has drowned ten cameras by his own count.


He has been a surf photographer for over 30 years, and said he became a photographer to “surf forever.” “I started looking at the waves and I started noticing how this wave broke differently on this edge of the reef. And then I noticed how interesting it was, all the different photographers swimming next to me. So I literally started shooting in all different directions. I would just hang out underwater for three hours and shoot the whole other side of it, below the surface instead of above the surface,” he said. Follow this link to hear Brian Bielmann talk about some of his favorite images.