The ocean is like a living, breathing, ever changing and transforming creature that is never the same.  Living blocks from the ocean my whole life, I have been fortunate to see the ocean almost every day of my life.  The ocean can be calming and filled with beauty.  The water colors changing from greens to blues and turquoise.  The sea can also have that raging power, rising surging and dark.  One thing is for certain, the ocean and it's waves are never the same.  Yes you can figure out approximately where each wave will break based on the height of a wave and depth of the water below, but each wave is slightly different.

The morning before Hurricane Gonzalo headed up the coast, I took my morning cruise along the beach searching for some of the local surf crew to shoot.  Looking down the coastline I saw the most amazing wave I had ever seen.  A formation unlike any other that rose up high into the air, curled, hollowed for a split second and crashed down.  I had to get to the break and hope it happened again.  Finding the location where this had occurred, I realized with the slope of the shoreline, water was surging up the beach then rushing back out toward deeper water, creating a back wave; a small wave that heads out into the break.  As new waves formed and came in, the two waves collided, forming some of the most incredible wave formations I have ever seen in my area.

After setting up, I knew the chances of seeing such an incredible wave as I had seen from up the coast, were slim.  I shot for nearly 3 hours, capturing some very cool wave patterns but nothing that was off the charts.  Then it happened.  A huge wave surged up the beach, causing all that water to flow back out toward the ocean,  slamming into another incoming set wave.  The impact created my most popular and asked for shot to date.....the shot I call "The Surge"  

The following slideshow are some of the shots from that 3 hours of shooting and the big one...."The Surge".  Hope you enjoy.