Takes a Lickin' Keeps on Clickin'
The Photography of Mike Peralta
Photos
by Mike Peralta
Story by Greg Archer
June 29, 2000
Mike Peralta really
needs to take a deep breath. Smack dab in the middle of ocean,
the Joan Collins of all waves, a Mavericks 30-footer, is suddenly
descending upon the courageous photographer. In one feel swoop,
Peralta is hissed at, slapped around and gobbled up high into
the lady's moist salt-water mouth where a vicious gargling ensues.
He's swallowed whole, plummeting a phenomenal 80 feet into the
moving matriarch's frothy belly, fighting a natural force that's
been compared to Niagara Falls. And just as dangerously as he
was devoured, Peralta is spit back onto the surface of the Pacific,
hundreds of yards away from his original destination, his camera
still in tow, his mind wondering whether or not he snapped that
monstrous "Lady in Wet."
This is not your average Kodak moment. But this is not your
average photographer, either.
"There are times when you can get a bloody nose just from
the pressure of being taken to the bottom of a particular reef,"
Peralta says. #34;When I know I'm going to get hit, I start
holding my breath and counting and I almost have to be in a
fetal position to keep myself intact. When I get sucked into
the wave, sometimes I keep my eyes open and as I get pulled
deeper into the water I can see the blackness of the ocean.
That's when I hope it just changes to a lighter green."
Breaking the rules
The Peralta experience
is known for breaking some established rules. Photography suddenly
snaps an entirely different picture. The human attached to the
35 mm lens goes for the unpredictable. He will swim a quarter
of a mile out into a cold, enigmatic sea - no paddles, no boards,
nothing - to bob before a body of surfers meeting with forces
of nature recognizable only from having watched the opening
credits of a Hawaii Five-O rerun. Here, Peralta performs
a balancing act between cautious human and human buoy. Here,
among the rushing water titans of Half Moon Bay, Peralta wonders
how there can be any such thing as an atheist. Where the 31-year-old
Santa Cruz resident plays Danno to the ocean's Jack Lord, something
symbiotic happens. In fact, it's pretty transcendent.
Peralta says that when he's out in that water, at the mercy
of those monstrous waves, "there's no way I can doubt God,
no way. You're always in danger, yet there's a calming feeling
about it, like you're connected to nature, to the planet, to
something bigger. And then, when the Mavericks (wave) comes,
you're suddenly mesmerized by this thing, this force and you
don't know what to expect. It picks you up and slams you down.
It's like an underwater washing machine-Ferris wheel ride that
you're strapped into and have no control over."
And this is a humble soul, who, at 5 feet 7 inches tall, has
developed skin so strong and thick from years of professional
swimming and oceanic adventures, he's like a human dolphin.
He is a man, though, who, when asked what it's really
like to come face to face with what local surf enthusiasts consider
the most dangerous force of nature to contend with, simply grins,
shrugs and shoots this interviewer a loose look.
"Oh, it's no big deal," he says.
No big deal? There are some who would totally disagree with
him. Especially after taking a little crash course in Mavericks
101.
Mavericks' bite
The shoreline known
as Mavericks is located in Half Moon Bay on Highway 1, near
the Half Moon Bay Airport. It has often been reported that San
Francisco resident Alex Matienzo officially discovered the immense
swells in 1962, naming them after his dog, Maverick, but longtime
lovers of the aquatic proving ground point out that the waves
have always been there. As far as the actual mass of Mavericks,
it can vary. This ocean enigma can easily reach 15 or 20 feet
in height and be equally as wide. Depending on the time of year
(Mavericks peaks between the months of October and March), a
60-foot icon is not impossible.
Photographing these water walls is normally done from a boat,
some distance away from the extreme athletes conquering the
surf. But Peralta has a tendency to get seasick, although that's
not the primary reason he shoots Mavericks from the water. It's
partially for the thrill, but there's also that bond he makes
with nature, becoming an Ocean Spiderman, a force who can scale
an aquatic skyscraper. And to do this, Peralta must use his
keep judgment and decide where to position himself in relationship
to the surfers.
He aspires "to line myself up to where the surfers are surfing
right over me, where the wave is breaking. If I line up correctly,
I'll be right under them and I can take the picture and get
into and under the wave and then get through it."
"Mavericks are pretty much the gnarliest waves around,"
says Ken Gallione, a 25-year-old surfer who works at Pacific
Wave surf shop in downtown Santa Cruz. "They are the heaviest,
slamming forces. It's pretty cool he takes his pictures from
the water (and not from a boat), but it's so dangerous. He's
crazy."
Translation: "God, he's gutsy!"
Another local surfer, a 23-year-old only known as Dave, has
heard of Peralta and that he snaps away at Mavericks from close
range. "I'd never go up there; I'm scared of it," he
says. Dave, who works at Arrow Surf Shop in Santa Cruz, admits
that he does not have the adventurous spirit needed to surf
waves as immense as Mavericks. "There's only an elite few
that have the balls to do it, because if you fall off the board,
you're eaten up by the sheer force of the Mavericks. You can
be held down underwater for something like a minute and 45 seconds,
maybe more. You have to be on the program - know what you're
doing."
Dave throws around that "crazy" word, too. "(Peralta)
swims around in the impact zone. It's nuts. But he takes these
incredible, beautiful pictures," he says.
Forty-three-year-old Jeff Clark, who's been surfing for 34 years,
runs Mavericks Surf Shop in Half Moon Bay, where he also lives.
Clark has surfed Mavericks since 1975 and has been hyped as
the "King of Mavericks."
"There are a lot of guys who want to surf the Mavericks
for the sheer power of it, because it's so extreme, so fun,"
Clark says. "But not everybody's threshold for fun is the
same. Mavericks is such a massive place, it's so big of a wave
and so hard to capture in a photography format."
But Peralta will risk his life trying.
A waking nightmare
"The first time
I went out (in 1994) it was a 15-foot-day," Peralta recalls.
"I didn't know what to expect. You get vision of the size
and you're mesmerized. On that day, I was able to duck and dive
every wave. I'd see the surfers ride over me and then I'd duck
under a wave because you have to be able to swim under it and
wait for the wave to come over you or the wave will pick you
up and throw you back down to the surface (of the ocean)."
There was a time when a wave just became too brutal. On that
particular day, Peralta explains how the waves usually peak,
then shoulder off. But suddenly the horizon line was taken away,
his entire view was blocked, and the width of the swell was
hundreds of yards wider than normal. Very unexpectedly, Peralta
was swooped up in the swirling cauldron and "taken down
to lowest spot in the water I've ever been."
It affected him so much that it took three weeks to recover
from it mentally: "You're taken to a place where you don't
know where you've gone before and wish you were back in bed,
curled up sleeping," he admits. "It shook me. It teased
my mind. I had nightmares."
But it didn't stop him. Peralta went back out.
"You've got to be on top of your game, there's a hidden
danger in anything" - anything from sharks (he was chased
out of the water by one in Mexico last year) and sea urchins
(not to be stepped on) to being dragged along the bottom of
the ocean floor by his forehead in Puerto Escondido (high on
the ouch factor). But one of the most haunting experiences
Peralta has been through was in the winter of 1994, on the day
high-profile surfer Mark Foo died while surfing Mavericks. Peralta
was out in the water shooting the Poseidons when it happened,
and it remains a reminder of just how hazardous things can be.
"If it's my time, it's my time," Peralta muses. "I'm
just lucky to be in a place where I am. Life is fragile. It's
something you don't have control over, really. I mean, even
with oncoming cars. But that's the way I've been all my life."
His story
Peralta began swimming
at the age of 5. He became a competitive swimmer at 6, and up
until the age of 12, he swam an average of four hours a day.
"I could swim in my sleep with all the years of swimming
I've done," Peralta says in all seriousness. He fondly remembers
when he was a Santa Cruz junior lifeguard, then moved on to
become a beach lifeguard, junior lifeguard instructor, and volunteer
First Responder for the Marine Rescue Unit of Santa Cruz County.
He names Jacques Cousteau as his primary influence, stating
he grew up watching him on TV every Sunday evening. Yet, it
wasn't until Peralta was in his early 20s that he took a real
fancy to photography and went professional with it. He admired
photography juggernaut Ansel Adams and waterman photographer
and cinematographers Don King, Jack McCoy and Steve Spaulding.
Peralta began using the medium to illustrate the profound importance
of honoring and protecting the Earth, and in 1994, when one
of his surfer friends told him about Mavericks, Peralta suddenly
merged his old and new loves together.
"I thought I'd try to do it, but all the other photographers
said ti would be impossible - that there was no way to shoot
Mavericks from the water, that you'd have to do it from a boat.
I guess I became the only one who did it from the water,"
he says.
Peralta's risky move suddenly became something risqué in
print. Magazines, local and national, took notice: California
Surfers Magazine, Muscular Development, Surfer Magazine, Surfing
Girl Magazine and one of the mightiest, Sports Illustrated.
O'Neill's Surf Inc., Santa Cruz Surf Shop, M-10 Surfboards and
Stretch Surfboard have all used Peralta's impressive visuals.
In addition, he continued to supply some colorful local advertising
for many Santa Cruz businesses, including the Santa Cruz County
Symphony, Kickback Clothing and Hard Concepts Inc. and Santa
Cruz Fine Foods. Action sports videos and Cinematography and
digital videography followed, including Monster Mavericks,
from Megalodon Productions.
With all of that under Peralta's professional belt, what could
possibly be missing?
One word. IMAX.
To the max
Peralta's IMAX Mavericks
water cinematography debut in Wild California, from the
same producers of Everest and The Living Sea,
debuted this month in San Francisco's stellar Metreon Museum.
It is also featured at San Jose's Tech Museum. Wild California
features past and present trailblazers who have gone the distance
and then some in their professional fields, anything from snow
boarding and sky surfing to Mavericks surfing, which was Peralta's
particular contribution in the IMAX project directed by Greg
MacGilivray, a legendary surf photographer and cinematographer
from the 1960s.
The photographer considers the IMAX work one of his greatest
achievements and a pinnacle in film work itself. But did he
really have to lug that huge IMAX camera out into the water?
Yes.
The 75-pound, $300,000 IMAX camera was placed in a specially
created waterproof box for Peralta, but often, the waves were
so brutal that three times the invaluable camera was ripped
out of his hands, only to be rescued by a helicopter: "The
camera was so heavy that when I took my hands off the control
handles, it would flip over immediately." How these technical
obstacles were overcome is stupefying, but Peralta was able
to capture 30-foot waves and surfers who were traveling at least
35 miles per hour near and around and above him.
"I think my role is to document this time period for the
next generation," Peralta admits, waxing philosophical about
his experiences, which, within the past few years, have taken
him around the world, to Hawaii and South America.
"It seems that every place has been touched, but then you
go out to these surf spots, it changes all the time; it's withstood
civilization and has been there throughout all of time. That
feeling is a part of me. Wherever I travel to, I feel the past
and the culture that has passed through. People seem to be strong
in other cultures. They're more honest and more open-hearted."
Last year, Peralta went to Peru, visiting ancient villages and
the temples there. "I talked to the people and had this
feeling of reliving the past, of experiencing this spirit, this
spirituality of a place that most people don't experience on
most vacations, like in a Westin Hotel or a Holiday Inn. But
in grass huts, somehow, you get to see the beauty in everything,
of what life really is."
Later this year, Peralta plans to travel somewhere near the
equator, somewhere near South America, but is nowhere near being
specific about it. Wherever that "secret" locale is,
Peralta is already invigorated about shooting the surf there.
And if all that precedes him doesn't make this brave Santa Cruz
soul somewhat of a human fish, one last bit of irony does.
Peralta is a Pisces.
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