LeRoy Grannis, surfing photographer, dies

LOS ANGELES - LeRoy Grannis, a noted photographer whose widely printed images captured and popularized the surf culture of California as it exploded in the 1960s and '70s, has died. He was 93.

Grannis, who also co-founded what is now Surfing magazine, died Thursday of natural causes at a Torrance nursing facility, said his son John.

"There's surfing royalty, and he was one of the kings," his son said. "He inspired so many big-name photographers that consider him their mentor."

Grannis' photographs "caught surfing at a critical juncture between cult and culture," wrote Steve Barilotti in the introduction to "LeRoy Grannis: Surf Photography of the 1960s and 1970s," a $400 limited-edition 2006 book.

While his photos of grass shacks and woody station wagons evoke nostalgia, Grannis "was documenting surfing's rapid evolution into an iconic lifestyle," Barilotti wrote. "His photos captured the real thing, providing a bridge between the world of Beach Boy lyrics and the reality of the Southern California beach scene."

The Surfing Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach, Calif., which added Grannis in 1999, saluted him for creating "many of the 1960s' most enduring surfing images." He freeze-framed fresh-scrubbed surfers riding longboards without leashes but also swung his camera around to record the evolving surf culture in California and Hawaii. For every "Greg Noll About to Eat It, Waimea Bay (Oahu), 1966" there was a scene-setter such as the "Aussie Surf Wagon" in California's Hermosa Beach plastered with such slogans as "The Young Wave Hunters" and "Malibu or Bust."

Although he often shot from shore with a long lens, Grannis in 1963 bought a Calypso underwater camera, invented by oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, and waded into the water.

A year later, Grannis started developing a waterproof camera housing that attached to the nose of a surfboard, which allowed him to stay closer to the action and avoid returning to shore to change film.

Although Grannis started surfing as a teen, he came to surf photography at 42 in 1959, a family man under doctor's orders to find a relaxing hobby to escape the stress from his job with the telephone company.

"I started chasing good surf, and what was a hobby became a lot more," Grannis told the Times in 2005.

"Surfing was becoming immensely popular. . . . And the 'Gidget' movie had struck a chord," he said. "Suddenly everyone wanted to surf, or at least look like surfers."

Encouraged by his good friend, pioneering surf photographer John Heath "Doc" Ball, Grannis bought an inexpensive 35-millimeter East German camera and built a darkroom in his garage. He started out selling photos for $1 apiece to Hermosa Beach surfers starved for images of themselves.