Another photographer and I were shooting with Andy and Bruce irons in Tahiti. The waves were really bad at the usual Teahupoo break so we searched up and down the coast and came across a wave three times bigger than anywhere else. The other photographer shot above the surface and I reluctantly decided to shoot below. You could be giving up on a lot of really good photos if you choose to go under the wave and sometimes it is not the right call. That day I really felt like I blew it because the other photographer got some insane shots.
Andy took off on a big wave. I swam underwater as close to the breaking wave as possible and waited to see Andy's image going by. Instead, the wave closed out and Andy's body came exploding through it as he attempted to keep from getting sucked over on to the reef. For a while after I felt like I had made the wrong choice, but the photos I got that day ended up being run in all different magazines and helped separate me from the rest of the pack as having helped to create a new progressive look – that can't be bad.
Brian Bielmann

About the shot

Biography
I was born in New York in 1957 and started surfing in 1970 at the age of 13. in the last two years of high school, all I could think about was graduating and moving to Hawaii. In 1975 I did just that, and so at age 17 I was living in paradise. Since then I've never looked back. When I was 21 I decided that I would be a surf photographer, but it still took a near death collision with a reef to get me off my surfboard and behind the camera.
It has now been 30 years of surfing and photography for me, and what a long, strange trip it has been. Lots of crazy people, lots of exotic places. Not much money, but a fantastic life. I have been lucky enough to see – and in a small way be a part of – the evolution of the sport of surfing. i have seen surfing champions come and go and i have visited and photographed places that were once unknown and have seen them become world famous hot spots.
I have seen technology change the way a wave is ridden and I have watched the pictures I used to draw on my notebook of surfers riding giant waves become a reality. My goal is to try to keep taking the viewer to places they have not visited and to see things unlike anything they have seen before. I work for Transworld Surf in the USA and Volcom clothing, and contribute to most surfing publications outside of America.
I pray that I continue to see the beauty in what God has created and be able to continue to spread that beauty with my own vision. Thank God for this fantastic world.