Beauty on Board

Great photographers do more than just capture images; they bring us into their imagination.

Tony Arruza’s Surfboard Art Project unites his passions for photography and catching waves.

WRITTEN BY AMY ROBINSON

“Ido my best to ‘make’ an image, not just click and capture a pretty picture,” says Tony Arruza, who has enjoyed a multi-decade professional career. “Composition, perspective, exposure and lighting are extremely important in adding dimension and giving emotion to an image. Equally important is the content of the image and what it says.” His photographic journeys have taken him to far-fung places across the globe on behalf of clients such as National Geographic, the Smithsonian, Coca-Cola, Boeing and Getty Images, but his favorite place to be is in the water, bucking waves, wind and currents to photograph surfers in their natural element. “We get some big waves right here in South Florida, especially when there is a prolonged winter nor’easter pushing big swells south.” His 1989 photos of a cobalt-blue wall of water on Christmas Day in Palm Beach anchored a two-page spread in Surfng Magazine and enticed some of the world’s best surfers to the island.

The risks associated with getting up close and personal with boards knifng through the water are signifcant, as opposed to shooting from the beach where sunburn is the biggest worry. “When waves are big and the water is deep, you can be held under and tossed around for what seems like minutes, swimming constantly for hours, fghting currents and ducking under breaking waves, and keeping an eye out for rogue waves,” he says. “If there is a reef or rock bottom, you can be drilled into those and sustain a real injury,” Arruza notes. “And the surfers themselves are traveling very fast on a hard board, so keeping out of their path while trying to get the shot is always tough. It’s very physical work. I wear a helmet often.”

Tony Arruza was born in Cuba and spent many happy days on the water fshing and swimming with his father. The family immigrated to Florida and the teen received his frst surfboard for his 13th birthday, a 9.5-foot toboggan-sized monster that fed his love of the sport as he hit all the spots in Florida that he could access. He attended college in Puerto Rico, where his surfng skills were polished as he began to take pictures of surfers from the water with a Nikonos amphibious camera, another timely gift from his father. Puerto Rico was not a well-known surfing destination at the time, so surfng magazines began to publish his photos. Travel assignments followed and he gained corporate clients while blending his passion with his profession.

The advent of digital photography and the internet brought big changes that required a retooling of his business. He was looking for something different to do with his career when inspiration hit. “I received an email from a printing supplier talking about a painter who was printing his work on this new fabric and then putting it on small pieces of foam shaped like surfboards. Having a strong passion for surfng and having worked as a surf photographer for many years, I thought, what if I could put my images on actual surfboards?” As with all great ideas, implementation was the early challenge. “When we put the print on the board, we make it a bit bigger than needed, and then tape off the edges.” Once the print is resined, the excess image is cut away, but hand-cutting a neat line through that hardened resin proved to be a challenge on the frst board they tried. “We had to make a bigger pin line to cover some mistakes but we worked that problem out and the rest went more smoothly.” Arruza prints the images himself onto a transparent fabric using a wide format pigment ink printer, which generates non-fading, extremely water-resistant, rich color. The transparency of the image added another dimension to the fnished piece by showing the wooden stringer through the image and the weave of the fberglass on top. “Once I have the print made, it is placed onto the shaped surfboard, which is usually a foam material, although we did do a couple of wooden surfboards.” The print is then adhered with resin and fnished like a normal surfboard, covered with fberglass, then resined, sanded, pin lined, gloss-coated and polished.

It was more than art for art’s sake that motivated Arruza to take on what he calls the Surfboard Project. “Embellishing the surfboard with a photograph is, for me, honorable,” he says, adding that his goal was to acknowledge the shapers, laminators and fnishers who make a living, breathing conduit to being in harmony with the waves. “Never did we lose sight that, frst and foremost, it was a surfboard that was being constructed — not a canvas in the shape of a surfboard.” There was a great deal of collaboration with the shapers. “First, to make sure each surfboard was different in size and style, and second, in image selection, so that it would accent the properties of the surfboard and be different from all the rest. As the project progressed this became harder and harder to do.” Each step of the way, Arruza photographed the process. “This project was in part about showcasing my photography work and the love I have for surfng, but also to pay homage to the craftsmanship of the hand shaper. These are individuals who work with their hands, eyes and basic tools to create an intricate vessel for riding waves and tapping into the ocean’s energy,” Arruza states.

As photography careers go, Arruza’s has seen some exciting moments. One highlight was working with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the lower Florida Keys, trying to capture photographic and video images of water spouts. “We would hang out at the airport in Key West and watch the radar for favorable conditions. Then we’d fy very fast to the location and hover right over, getting quite close,” he recalls. “The doors were wide open on the helicopter, a TV cameraman on one side and me on the other, both of us strapped in of course, but I unstrapped myself at one point to lean out for a shot.” In his quest for a dramatic picture, Arruza dropped the camera he was holding. “My frst instinct was to jump out after it but I caught myself at the last second.” Arruza’s world travels have given him a healthy respect for other cultures, too. In Portugal, he took hundreds of photos of the sacred Fatima pilgrimage, which is associated with visions of the Virgin Mary in the early 1900s, and attracts millions of visitors to its twiceyearly pilgrimage. “I left my camera bag in the car for just a few minutes and came back to a broken window and my camera bag gone. The worst part about it was that the flm was missing and there was no re-shooting it,” he recalls.

Also in the bag was his passport, making return to the States problematic. Feeling defeated, he drove 100 miles to the U.S. embassy to fll out forms for a temporary passport. Then he waited. “I got a call later that someone had turned in my bag. I drove back to Nazare as fast as I could.” The thieves had taken the valuables and then given the bag to a local fsherman with Arruza’s passport and flm inside. “The cameras were gone, but getting the flm back was everything to me.”

One of Arruza’s favorite assignments kept him close to home: an ad campaign for Visit Florida. “It was the kind of job that makes you explore areas that you may not normally visit,” he recalls. While his photography favors the natural world in all its complex glory, he does not often have the time to camp and hike as much as he would like, due to work schedules. “When the opportunity arose where I would be paid to do something that I love and in greater depth, I quickly packed tent, boots and kayak.”

Traveling north to south, the crew captured crystalline Blue Hole in Ichetucknee Springs State Park and ponies on Paynes Prairie, along with more expected scenes of night life, shopping and beautiful girls frolicking on beaches. Each image is an invitation into Arruza’s point of view. “Through the years, your eye gets better; you become a better judge of images, learning to capture not just a pretty sunset or a nice fower, but something more.”

Photography can be a humbling business. Being in the right place at the right time is only part of what makes for great pictures. “You don’t always know what you have, even if you turn the camera around and look at the display, until you download the images onto a bigger screen,” Arruza refects. “Many times it will take a week or a month or even more to fnd the right image — some nuance that makes itself apparent only later. Like a great bottle of wine, you don’t always catch all of its charms on the frst sip.”