Chris Burkard/ Massif
One of the world’s most recognized adventure photographers is redefining life behind the lens.
It’s early November, and head-high surf pounds the Pismo Beach Pier, on California’s central coast. But Chris Burkard has solid footing on the railing. Without hesitation he bends his knees, pivots 180 degrees, and backflips into the great Pacific washing machine. I lose sight of him for what feels like a minute before he appears in the whitewash. Another monster wave rumbles in. Burkard catches it and bodysurfs to shore. “That’s not warm,” he yells, shaking out his wet hair like a dog. “I don’t drink coffee. I have a hard time focusing, but all I need to do is jump in the ocean.”
“Not warm” is hard to believe coming from someone who treads water next to icebergs. When the 32-year-old photographer isn’t working in eastern Greenland or Alaska, he’s here, dropping his core temperature at the beach where he grew up and his career began 13 years ago. With around 100 magazine covers to his credit—plus sponsors like Black Diamond and Sony, prestigious awards, a TED Talk that’s been viewed almost two million times, a catalog of films and books, and three million Instagram followers—Burkard could go freeze anywhere he likes. Yet, with his wife, Breanne, and two sons (Jeremiah, six, and Forrest, four), as well as a studio just down Highway 101, he’d like to spend more than about three months a year at home.
“This is one of California’s last funky beach towns,” Burkard says of Pismo, peering through bloodshot blue eyes at tourist shops and cafés. “When I was a teenager, I turned to photography as a way to get out of here. Now there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
(Published in the July 2018 issue of Outside. Read the online version, or view the PDF here.)
