In order to get an interview with Chris Burkard, I had to wake up at 5:30 am on a cold and brisk California morning and climb up a mountain at sunrise. The 31-year-old surf and travel photographer has made a name for himself with his wanderlust inspired photos shot in remote (and often very cold) locations all over the world. With over 2 million followers on Instagram, and over 27 trips to Iceland logged, Burkard is part explorer, part adventurer, and most importantly, a visual storyteller.
After weeks of trying to secure a time and a place for an interview with one of the most well-traveled photographers in the world, there I was, standing over one of the most beautiful and breathtaking landscapes I’ve ever seen, with Burkard…and about 50 other photographers. I was part of a group of photographers, filmmakers, and creatives who made the trek to take part in a sunrise photo walk in Lake Arrowhead, California. The walk was one of the many scheduled events with celebrated photographers during the annual creative workshop called Yeah Field Trip.
So many times I had perused the Pismo Beach-based photographer’s ethereal, deeply saturated captures of natural landscapes on his Instagram feed and mused at how he was able to be at just the right time and just the right place to capture the light, depth or angle of his subjects so perfectly. But the secret turned out not to be so mysterious…you just have to be willing to wake up before everyone else and trek a little.
Burkard will tell you time and time again in many of his workshops that the best photographs happen at sunrise and sunset. But they won’t just give themselves to you if you stand there with your camera at eye level. You have to be willing to work a little, either get low in the ground, find a higher angle, or…climb to the top of the highest peak. During the photo walk, he explained that he always surveys an area before taking a single frame, walking around until he finds the highest and lowest angles and then picking the best spot to shoot.
Something about that moment on the hilltop resonated with me, captured my eye, and the photograph I ended up taking practically made itself. While my experience was a rare one for me, it seems that Burkard’s photography is full of these magical moments connected to nature.
Part of why his photos are so successful is because he’s sharing that experience, that communion with nature with his viewer: “Regardless of any commercial work I do or editorial work I do,” says Burkard, “what I really do is share experiences. And in a way that allows the customer, consumer, client, friend, family member, whoever, to really feel like they are there. And to be there with me.”
Except today I was, literally, with Burkard – and a lot of other artists who felt inspired by his work. This is part of the magic of Yeah Field Trips, getting to spend time interacting with other artists whose work you might only know from a distance through social media.
As the group started to make their way down the mountain, and we made our way back to some warm coffee in the main tent of the campground, I finally had a chance to invite Burkard to sit and chat.
During one of his presentations at Yeah Field Trip the night before, he expounded on this need to share a little bit more deeply, explaining that it started when he was very young. “A big part of the reason that I was so driven was because I knew that my mom had given us so much,” said Burkard. “She had me when she was super young, and didn’t travel, so when I was going to these places, I wanted to bring back these stories for her. It was something I wanted to share with my family. People that weren’t going out and seeing these places,” he explained.
Some of Burkard’s most well-known work is of surfing, but not necessarily the warm and tropical kind. A surf adventure with Burkard usually entails subzero conditions, snow, and lots of flying, sailing, and/or trekking through mountains. His latest film, “Under an Arctic Sky,” is a forty minute documentary about six surfers on the hunt for the perfect wave in Iceland during a brutal winter storm. The film documents their attempt, despite constant darkness and the worst storm the country has seen in over 25 years, to surf under the Northern Lights.
When explaining the driving force that led him to these remote locations, Burkard says, “I was seeking wildness. I was starting to look at the places that I hadn’t been and I realized only about a third of the oceans are warm. So, if was going to find the perfect surf or something that represented what I wanted, it was probably going to be somewhere cold. Through surfing, this was the way that I was able to come and understand the remote beaches of Iceland ten years ago.” Burkard has also led surf expeditions (some even by helicopter) to unsurfed waves in Russia, Norway, and just about every other cold-weather country you can travel to.
The more Burkard has traveled and photographed these remote locations, the more he has grown concerned with the environmental impact of his work. “I’m learning, but I think that for me, there’s a conservation tone that I feel like I can do better in my work. It’s not something that I lack completely, but it’s something I wish I could have a little bit of a clearer voice on,” explained Burkard. He added, “I want to make sure that when I can control it, it is meant to promote a place that needs to be preserved, or promote a place that needs protection.” This goal is certainly not out of reach for Burkard, as it’s hard not to fall in love with and want to protect a place when you see it so beautifully captured through his lens.
The other element Burkard feels that he might like to explore more of in his work is portraiture. Although he gets to photograph some of the most beautiful landscapes and waterscapes in the world, Burkard tells me, “I wish that I shot more portrait work, there was a time in my career that I really wanted to shoot more of that. It is something that I feel deep down if I had the time, I would love to spend more time on.” I find the answer surprising, as many of Burkard’s photos actually do feature environmental portraits of surfers.
As a surf photographer, Burkard is constantly commissioned by surf magazines to shoot campaigns featuring pro surfers in their element. As a surfer and woman of color myself, I asked Burkard about diversity of his subjects. I explained to Burkard that many of the surfers photographed in my favorite surf photography feeds are white, so I asked him if he felt that he had enough diversity in his own work. Burkard thought about it quietly for a minute, and told me, “That’s a challenging one. I think that the hardest thing, in all transparency, is that it’s a predominantly white-dominated sport. The sad thing is that when I’m being commissioned by magazines, I’m having to shoot athletes that the advertisers are sponsoring, and that is usually a limited amount of people. But the truth of the matter is that there’s tons of surfers of color, just not American. There are usually Brazilians, tons of Indonesians, also Mexicans. It’s all over. It’s just that the world we’re in, we are seeing brands that are based in the U.S., and they are wanting to advertise their U.S counterparts. So often what happens is that we are sort of limited to one perspective, or one view on it.” At this point in his successful career, Burkard certainly does hold a certain power to shift perspective through his lens if he does start photographing more surfers from all over the world.
Despite his commercial success, I asked Burkard to tell me about the almost certain failures he must have experienced along the way to the top, as is the case with any successful artist or entrepreneur. I knew there had to have been some challenges when Burkard described his modest beginnings as a broke 19-year-old who had never left California and picked up a camera because he wanted to travel and see the world. “I think in any career you learn a lot, and I’ve really tried to learn from my mistakes a ton, but I’ve burnt bridges. I’ve tried to push forward my agenda at the expense of other things and it’s so hard because I think that drive to want to be the best, in some ways in the long term, it has affected me poorly.” Although Burkard may be conflicted about the ambitions that got him to where he is today and the bridges he’s burned in the past, he seems to be building new ones with his inspiring work.
Twelve years into his photography career, Burkard is still evolving as an artist: “ If my work keeps evolving, who knows where I’ll be. But in the last couple of years I’ve found myself doing a lot more teaching, a lot more speaking, a lot more on-camera stuff, and things like that. So if I can continue doing that, and it can help further this message that I really want people to go out and explore, and get outside of their comfort zone, then that would be huge. That would be all I could ask for.”
“Under an Arctic Sky” will be premiering at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival as part of the Shorts: Surf’s Up! Program. To buy tickets for the screening click here.
What’s in Chris Burkard’s Gear Bag?
What are you shooting on right now?
“Sony A6500 and A7RII, and when I’m shooting low lights, it’s usually the A7SII.”
Favorite lens?
“My Favorite lens is probably still a 24mm, if I had to shoot with one lens. But, I love to shoot with a 16-35mm. It’s my favorite zoom.”
