Surf Photo of the Year Awards: Duncan Macfarlane’s image

Everything aligned for this shot of big wave legend Shane Dorian in action, from Surfing Australia’s Surf Photo of the Year Award.

Wow: Shane Dorian in action. Picture: Duncan Macfarlane

Bet you’ve never seen a surf photo quite like this before, have you? It was captured by Billabong’s veteran staff photographer Duncan Macfarlane, who’s never made a surf photo quite like this before. It was a windless, sunny day in Margaret River and the water was unusually clear – perfect conditions for him to dive down and shoot Shane Dorian, a renowned big wave surfer from Hawaii, in action from below. “When conditions are right it looks amazing from this perspective,” says Macfarlane. “The wave is like a beautiful, silvery blue cylinder.” It was pure serendipity that a school of sleek, muscular Australian salmon cruised into frame at just the right moment; Macfarlane seized the ­opportunity it presented. His image is a finalist in Surfing Australia’s Surf Photo of the Year Awards.

The 34-year-old from Sawtell, near Coffs Harbour, has always made his living as a surf photographer – first as a freelancer for the surfing mags, and for the past decade as a Billabong staffer. He travels the world working on its marketing ­campaigns, joining top surfers on glamorous road trips and shooting ­images to sell the lifestyle; the ­collaboration with ­Dorian was part of a campaign to spruik a new line of wetsuits. (Interesting random fact: Dorian’s late ­father was a stunt double for Elvis Presley in the 1961 hula-and-ukulele fest Blue Hawaii.)

Some readers may have read the words “Margaret River” and “salmon” above, and put two and two ­together and thought sharky. Macfarlane was thinking that, too: in those waters, with all that bait around, he knew the men in grey suits were out there. “And a few minutes later, a shark breached about 50 metres away from me,” he says. It wasn’t exactly a big one, he ­concedes matter-of-factly. “Only about six foot. But you wouldn’t want to get nibbled by it!”