Ocean Photography for Sale

Surfer and photographer Ray Collins is an aesthetic daredevil. When he goes into the water with his camera to get close to massive waves, the ocean tosses and churns turbulently around him. He waits for the perfect one, not to ride it this time, but to capture its untamed beauty in that fleeting moment of its perfect existence. What we see lasts only a mere instant: a perfect and classically beautiful sculpture modelled purely from wind and water, beneath a threatening sky. The Huffington Post writes “Ray sees waves the way you’ve never seen them … capturing the swells in otherworldly perspective. They can be mountainous, menacing and flat-out gorgeous.”

In the work of Peter Yan, a young photographer based out of Australia, the camera takes a vertical view of a swimming pool embedded in a rock island. These pools, built right on the ocean to harness the power of nature for their own purposes, are common on the coasts of Australia. They are filled with seawater, as well providing an incredible aesthetic effect. In Yan’s pictures, the pools are a thrilling dialog between nature and art. Peter Yan on Instagram: @yantastic.

Italian photographer Alessandro Puccinelli shows the enormous artistic power inherent in the ocean. His pictures follow in the tradition of 19th century sea and storm paintings, with heavy spindrift thundering through the image and transforming the smallest film grain, the tiniest pixel, into energetic, foamy particles. In a contrast-heavy game of light and shadow, white and black, moonlight and darkness, the massive waves morph into imposing clouds of water. He say it is "as if the ocean is taking a moment before its rage inevitably and relentlessly starts again with the next wave." You can practically hear the waves crashing!

Animal encounters occupy a significant role in the intersection between mankind and nature. Documentary filmmaker Joe Bunni engineered run-ins with wildlife in an extreme location: the icy blue Norwegian Sea, where the contrast between white bears, white ice, and deep blue water is striking. Polar bears are strong swimmers, which makes close encounters with them amidst high waves very impressive. The young, female polar bear curiously swam up to the lens, Bunni says. When she bumped into it with her nose, she was startled and backed off. Apparently, encountering your doppelganger and being scared of it is not unique to humans.