“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.
“As the waves start to come in, you let the wave pitch over you but you dive underwater and then you turn around and you’re facing back towards shore,” he said. “What happens is the wave creates a vortex; the wave sucks up underwater and then in the middle of the wave it creates a window and you’re able to see out of the wave and on the shore on land.
“It does this magical thing in front of you and you can capture it. It’s awesome.”
Few in the world can pull off a shot like that. It stems from becoming comfortable in the water—and that takes experience. “You could take a thousand amazing landscape and nature photographers, stick them in the ocean with a water housing, and they’re gonna be horrible at it,” Selway said. “You could take a surfer, give them a water housing, and give them a few days, and they'll probably be amazing at it.”
His foray into the brine to take photos began after he ordered his first AquaTech underwater camera housing in 2007. But he quickly found out during his first photoshoot: “Wow, this is a lot harder than it looks,” he said, adding that it’s not made easier by the fact that “the sweet spot is just basically getting annihilated by the wave, and that’s how you get that full 360-barrel look all around you.”
Other than the glassy insides of surfing waves, Selway has photographed Hawaii’s iconic volcanic eruptions in 2008, capturing the convergence of molten lava and sea—not a photoshoot for the faint of heart. One of his most impressive feats involved descending a 30-foot cliff, dipping into the steaming ocean—while dodging scalding-hot “lava bombs” floating around—and capturing a curling wave before an infernal backdrop. “You can feel the heat coming up from the bottom of the ocean, which was super, super crazy,” he said.
Two decades in the water has taught him to respect the power of Mother Nature. Surviving the big waves that knock your fins off and pin you to the bottom has more to do with not panicking and staying calm to stay alive. He’s had a few close calls, including the time a rip current rocketed him way out to sea, almost preventing him from making it back ashore. He now ventures on photoshoots with a friend to keep watch most of the time.
Yet with his hard-won ocean savvy comes an intuition that is useful in underwater wave photography. “I became really comfortable in the water and know exactly where to be, when the wave would break,” he said. “I just had a good feel for it, and then over time I just got really, really good at it.
“I’ve been doing that, shooting waves, for almost 20 years now.”
Perhaps Selway’s most enduring shot stems from the tranquility of a morning visit to Kua Bay on the Big Island in Hawaii in 2013. “I always wanted to get like the sunrise almost coming straight down the barrel,” he said. “One morning, I parked at the gate, walked down to the beach 20 minutes—because I'd always get to the beach before the gate would even open—get in the water, and the light was awesome.” With no wind and “just amazing” 6-foot waves breaking pretty close to shore, Selway photographed “that one shot” he had always been thinking about in his head. He said, “I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a cooler shot to this day.”
