Roaring waves and mewing ocean birds penetrate the pre-dawn darkness. Nick Selway, who has lived here in Hawaii for 14 years, parks and enters before the gate opens. He then walks 20 minutes down to the shore where the water is warm—around 80 degrees. His goal is to photograph the magic of a sunrise shining through big, breaking waves.
“The ocean does something to your body, it kind of starts to heal you,” the 39-year-old photographer told The Epoch Times of his passion for photographing waves. That passion was first piqued from old surfing magazine shots from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Born in Seattle, Selway moved to Hawaii at age 21 and carved out a niche by diving in and capturing through his underwater lens the glassy insides of those iconic surfer waves. With the curling water turned inside out, as it were, viewing the outside world—the sky and land—from within the wave, it’s a surreal perspective like no place else….