Against All Odds - Image 1 of 3 of Kelsey J.’s SuperRare genesis NFT collection “Transcendence”, a series of newly photographed, never before seen self portraits. Combining conceptual work with landscape imagery, the collection is an interpretation of finding beauty in life’s darkest moments. Through each photograph, it depicts the process of not only facing your greatest challenges, but rising to become a better person because of them.
43.3239° N, 124.3826° W
When there’s a mighty force of peril looming ahead, what will you do? How will you choose to face your demons?
“Against All Odds” is a photograph that has been six years in the making. It took three separate trips to the Oregon coast over the course of my entire photography career in order to finally capture this mythical giant wave. For this wave to appear, you need the perfect combination of a high surf warning, a winter storm, and the day’s high tide. This past winter, I monitored Oregon’s weather systems for months before finally seeing the storm warning I needed. Two days later, on the first day of the year, I drove 8 hours through the night alone to get there. On the way, my car slipped on black ice at 2am on the dark windy roads, and I lost control of the vehicle. By some miracle, I remained unscathed and continued on my journey to the wave.
The next day after little sleep, I went to the location and waited, watching the ocean for hours, only to find the waves weren’t crashing nearly high enough. My heart sunk, and I wondered if this trip would be another failed attempt at capturing this force of nature. I was about to leave when, by some stroke of luck, I overheard a park ranger say the wave was supposed to appear the next morning at the exact time of high tide during the peak of the storm.
And so I extended my trip another night, staying in a cheap motel in town. That night, the winter storm approached, so strong it knocked over power lines and I found myself alone in a black out. With the strong winds rattling the walls of the motel, I laid wide awake in bed, wondering if the old building was going to collapse on top of me.
In the morning, I returned to the cliffs alongside the ocean, set up my tripod and camera while getting battered by wind, rain, and hail, and waited again. Hours later, my eyes could hardly believe it when the giant wave collided with the rocks, crashing almost 100 feet high. By this point, I was soaked to the bone and my hands were so numb they could barely move, but somehow I managed to click the shutter and get the image I had been dreaming of for over half a decade.
This image was one of the most difficult to capture over my entire career thus far. It personifies the moment you realize you’re facing a challenge in life greater than you could ever imagine overcoming. And yet somehow, you know the only way out is to face it head on, with conviction. Against all odds.
