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David Orias has no formal education in art or photography. Instead, he honed his style and skills through experimentation and studying other photographers, often on the internet.
A self-proclaimed child of the digital age, Orias processes his images in Photoshop. He primarily adjusts their color, contrast and saturation, but “I am also beginning to understand layers,” he says.
The bold colors and painterly feel in many of my wave photographs are mostly the result of early morning light, camera motion and slow shutter speed exposures, in contrast to the more typical front-lit photos and fast shutter speeds seen in many surfing photographs.
Using long exposures, Orias captures an otherwise imperceptible color spectrum. He explains that, during wildfire season, the sunlight in Southern California can be refracted and scattered by smoke particles, creating an eerie orange morning light.
In 2010, one of his photographs received an honorable mention in PhotoRadar’s Picture of the Year competition.
"Personally knowing some of the most acclaimed landscape and oceanscape photographers of our generation, Davids work strikes me more as a personal conversation with the elements, opposed to merely taking a picture of the water. His choices of technical capacities and compositional characteristics are on par with some of the best!"