Famous photographer records his own final moments in the water before dying of heart attack

Abe Asher
·2 min read

Famed surfer and surfing filmmaker Larry Haynes recorded his final moments in the water last week before suffering a fatal heart attack in Hawaii.

Mr Haynes, heralded by the surfing publication Stab as a pillar of his community on Oahu’s North Shore in Hawaii, was 61 years old.

The photographer was enjoying a session on a stand-up paddleboard at Laniakea Beach last Thursday before he returned to the parking lot where he had left his car and suffered the heart attack. Shortly thereafter, friends found footage that Mr Haynes recorded of his final surfing experience.

Brian Bielmann told KHON2 that he and a group of other people close Mr Haynes watched the video together the next day.

“I went down and got it this morning and immediately took it home and went on the computer,” Bielmann said. “There must have been 40 files and we looked through all of them. And then he had a lot of, like, non-start type waves and over and over and finally caught this beautiful wave and rode it for a long time. And by the end of it, we were cheering and yelling and crying.”

Tributes to Mr Haynes poured in from across the surfing community at the end of last week, with colleagues and friends remembering the late photographer for his talent, courage, and joy.

Mr Haynes achieved a considerable level of notoriety for his work as a photographer and filmmaker. He was most famous for making the surf film series Fluid Combustion starting in 1994, and was profiled alongside two other adventure photographers and cinematographers on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel in 2019.

That feature focused in part on the considerable risks adventure photographers and cinematographers have to accept in their work. Mr Haynes himself had sustained numerous injuries during the course of his career and also filmed the deaths of two surfers — Malik Joyeux in 2005 and Kirk Passmore in 2015.

His death of a sudden heart attack in a parking lot after a relatively uneventful surf outing was a shock.

“I just found out he suffered a heart attack in his car today after surfing Laniakea Beach,” David Elecciri Jr, one of Mr Haynes’ friends, wrote on Instagram. “Just a few hours before, he had called me to have lunch and go for a surf at Lani’s.”

Mr Haynes is survived by his daughter, Lily.