Happy Holidays with Surfing Santa
In-between tech gear purchases!
With Thanksgiving here, the 2024 holidays have officially begun, and who better to usher them in than Santa Claus himself?
Or should we say, the one and only Surfing Santa?
Back in 1978, Kevin Cody, the publisher of the Los Angeles area publication the Easy Reader had this idea: what if the old Surfing Santa cartoon could come to life, for real?
He made it happen, and the tradition lives on today, as Hermosa Beach chiropractor Derek Levy, who is neither fat, nor bearded, dons a red and white wetsuit and hops aboard a candy cane surfboard in the waves of Manhattan Beach for the annual Easy Reader cover shot.
As always, we were on hand to make a little video about the yearly tradition, which I invite you to watch!
As I said, Derek doesn’t look the part off-camera, but he has a skill that few other Santas can boast of: namely, surf! He was inducted into the Hermosa Beach Surfer’s Walk of Fame in 2015.
Tech Specs
Getting a good shot of Mr. Claus out in the ocean with your phone ain’t easy, nor recommended. This is one of those cases where really you need a big, long lens on top of a good camera. The cover shots above and below were taken by Ray Vidal of Paul’s Photo in Torrance, California. He uses a Canon R5 and a big zoom, shot at the 500mm focal length.
For the video, I used my drone for some shots of Derek walking out into the water, and a few overhead shots, and surfing clips were captured on the compact Sony RX10IV camera, which has a built-in 24mm-600mm zoom lens. Sadly, there have been reports that Sony will stop making this incredible camera, so if you can find a model, before it disappears, you might want to pick one up. It’s amazing for shoots like this, along with bird watching, safaris, that sort of thing.
Happy holidays! And huge thanks to Kevin Cody for keeping local journalism alive and traditions in the South Bay of Los Angeles.
Ho, ho ho!
Surfing Santa—a SoCal tradition. I doubt it’ll catch on at the North Pole. Bravo to you, Kevin and Derek for keeping it alive.
Ho ho ho.