Is this the best photo of a dolphin ever taken?

Is this the best photo of a dolphin ever taken? This is guaranteed to be a genuine photo with no digital retouching or dolphin additions… that’s how it was! The photo was taken at 4:16 pm on June 28, 2002 (thank goodness for digital cameras, they store all that kind of information!) on a Nikon D1X camera with a Nikkor 500mm f8 mirror lens.

The once-in-a-lifetime photograph of 17 dolphins charging into humans during a professional surfing competition was taken by John Pauling, a South African surf photographer…he’s been surfing since 1965 and has worked as a professional photographer ever since. 1973 (his entire adult career). We published it on Artists Harbor as a photograph on glossy paper and as a poster on matte art paper.

Here’s what John has to say about how he got lucky and took the best surf shot of his career:

“It was taken at a well known surf spot south of Durban called Cave Rock during a surfing contest called the Rip Curl Tube Masters. It’s an annual event that takes place there because of the big hollow waves that come up at that time of the year. anus.

I have been a professional photographer my entire working life since 1973 and have been involved with surfing since about 1965, so I have learned a lot from real “surfers”!

At this time of the year (May to July) the swell is always higher due to weather conditions (our winter) and along the Natal coast we have a unique situation with huge schools of sardines migrating down the coast towards Mozambique. Of course, the bigger fish follow the sardines, the game fish follow those fish and then the sharks and dolphins follow the game fish, the old who eats who story.

It’s quite common to have dolphins in the waves with you while surfing, sometimes it’s quite unnerving to have them approach you while you’re on the wave!

On this particular day, I saw the pod surfing the bottom line behind the surfers and knew from experience that at some point one or two of them would break away and join the guys in the swell.

So I was anticipating some action from them, but nothing like what they presented to me!

I’ve been taking surf photography for over 30 years all over South Africa, but I rate this as the best I’ve been lucky enough to get!”