Photographer Dwight Mudry announced the release of his self-published digital book "Skim: A Photographer's Journey."
As an amateur photographer, Mudry photographed waves for several years, but he felt his images were usually pretty uninteresting.
That all changed when he first saw a skimboarder on Aliso Beach, in Southern California, who was running down the beach into the surf, sliding far out to catch the almost vertical face of the oncoming wave, throwing a huge spray fan, and wrapping around to return to the sand.
Following that encounter with the skimboarder, Dwight Mudry was hooked - obsessed actually - by the way skimmers added so much to his wave photography.
At first, he felt his skimboarding images were all about the wave, the curl, the slab, the lip, the barrel, and even the foam of a breaking wave.
A Skimboarder Changes The Wave
But as long as he had a skimmer in the frame, he found that every part of a wave could be interesting. Today, Mudry is friends with Austin Keen, Blair Conklin, and many other groms and pros from Laguna Beach.
"Skim: A Photographer's Journey" is a book about his journey as a photographer, first with a focus on the wave, then to the individuality of the skimboarders he met and got to know, and finally to the feel or "vibe" of skimboarding.
"Because skimmers are on the beach waiting for waves, it is amazing to me how often beach visitors who have never seen them, strike up conversations with our local riders," Dwight Mudry told SurferToday.
"My book tries to capture the friendly atmosphere of skim culture that I think is unique to skimboarding and is a very welcoming part of the beach experience."
The book is now available at Amazon Books and in Laguna Beach, at Victoria Skimboards and Hobie Surf Shop.