High Tide: A Surf Odyssey — Photography by Chris Burkhard
Categories:
Books
Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations › View or edit your browsing history After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.
About the Author
Searching for wild, remote destinations and offbeat landscapes, Chris Burkard portrays the humble placement of the human in contrast to nature. At the age of 28, Burkard has established himself as a known name in the surf and outdoor industries. www.chrisburkard.com
“In a world that is getting louder and louder, it’s never been more important to seek out the last quiet places.” –Chris Burkard
The Middle Kingdom, Central Coast, California
Big Sur’s natural world speaks loudest. Its animals, its trees, its cliffs, its sea. There is nothing else. A soul’s sanctity is born from not what is created, but what is innately inherited from eons of living time—a lifetime. A metaphor, Big Sur is life. And so existing here, ultimately, is a white canvas, a surfer’s life the everlasting watercolor.
— SOMETIMES CALLEDthe “middle kingdom”, the rural coastline between Avila Beach and Carmel is perhaps one of the world’s most complex surf zones. Difficult to master even for locals like Burkard, scoring good Central Coast surf requires a relatively calculated strain of know-how and a bit of luck.
Excerpt by Michael Kew
Experience spectacular surfing with breathtaking landscapes with international surfer and photographer, Chris Burkard.
High Tide is a brilliant photographic collection captured during Chris Burkard’s travels, from the Arctic Circle south to the Roaring Forties, with a bit of tropical diversion between. And, of course, Burkard’s own Californian backyard. Dive into the turquoise Caribbean, the gray Atlantic, the bathtub-warm Indian, the bluey-green Pacific. Feel the warm white island sand squish between your toes and the cold white Norwegian snow sting your face, putting yourself in the wildly beautiful moments that Burkard loves to share with the world.
Take a visual vacation to these beautiful landscapes
The Aleutian Islands, Alaska
Barbuda, East Caribbean
South Island, New Zealand
Lofoten Islands, Norway
Kamchatka, Russia
The Faroe Islands
Central Coast, California
Kerala State, India
Escape to wild, remote destinations, offbeat landscapes and extreme surfing.
Kamchatka, Russia
What makes a good picture stand out from the average?
A good photograph is something that inspires people, that moves them, that makes them want to get up and go do something. That should be most important. It should have good light, great contrast, an emotional trigger. The real beauty of a good photograph is there are no real rules. You can look at something in a bunch of different ways and still make a beautiful image, because it’s really about the content.
–Michael Kew interview with Chris Burkard
Kerala State, India, Indian Ocean
What does photography mean to you?
It’s been a tool, a vehicle for me to see the world. It’s been a way to inspire people as well as myself. Photography is a job & a business, which is great, but I’ve never been a good writer, I’ve never done journals or taken notes.
All I do is take pictures of my experiences. At the end of the day, at the end of my career, of my life, I’m not going to give a crap about how much money photography made for me; I’m going to care about the ability to share these experiences with my kids. A way of remembering (hopefully) a life well-lived.
–Michael Kew interview with Chris Burkard
Lofoten Islands, Norway
“To truly embrace anything that’s worth while, we have to be willing to shiver just a little bit.”
–Chris Burkard
Central Coast, California
What do you try to capture?
Photographs are one-dimensional, right? They’re just flat, especially when you’re looking at them on a computer screen. Years ago I’d studied a little bit of two- and three- dimensional art, and one of the things I learned was how to use color as a way to make an image stand out and look three-dimensional using warm tones and cool tones to my advantage, pushing and pulling them to make an image feel deep. Lighting has always played a huge role in my work.