flame

Larry Moore's obsession with perfect lighting has altered the course of surfing. His commitment to excellence is responsible for the careers of many top photographers, the pioneering of several world-class breaks and the success of Surfing magazine. Flame was the publication's first photo editor -- a position he held for some 30 years.
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After he was diagnosed with a grade 4 glioblastoma on December 31, 2002, Flame took the same approach to his tumor as he did to his photo-editing job: he was relentless, tireless and showed no mercy. Despite having a less than 15 percent chance of survival of more than 18 months, Flame beat all odds and statistics, challenging the doctors to give him more radiation, more tumor-removing surgeries, different, more powerful chemotherapy. And throughout this entire 33-month period, just up until about 3 weeks before his death when he could no longer walk, Flame made it into the office almost every single day.
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Just before receiving the Lifetime Acheivement Award from SIMA in 2005, Flame was interviewed for an article in the OC Register:
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Q: You're known as a pretty industrious guy, so when you learned you had cancer, how did it affect things?
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A: Sure, I wish that I didn't wake up with a Grade 4 tumor in my head. But at the same time, I do feel that the Lord not only has a plan for my life and has been by my side in this whole process, but He has given me 35 years of opportunities at Surfing Magazine, a phenomenal wife, and a great son. Yeah, maybe the photography was cut a little short, but I've been so blessed.
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Q: How would you prefer to be remembered?
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A: There's no doubt in my mind a man of deep faith is more important to me for people to know than the greatest surf photo I ever took.
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Larry Moore died peacefully early in the morning of October 10 at his home in Dana Point, California. He is survived by his wife, Candy, and son Colin Moore.
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In his honor, The Moore family has established the "Follow the Light Foundation". It's a non-profit that will carry on Flames work and help enable young, aspiring surf photographers to fulfill their dreams.wwww.FollowtheLightFoundation.org
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If you would like to make a donation, please make checks to:The "Orange County Community Foundation" with "Follow the Light" written in the memo line"send to:The Orange County Community Foundation 30 Corporate Suite 410 Irvine, CA 92606www.OCCF.org
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Please feel free to enjoy Flames story and God bless you all...To see Flames paddle out video at salt creek cut and paste: ----------------http://surfingthemag.com/surfing-photo-video /surfing-videos/flame-paddle/index.html--------------------- ----------------------
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The son of an L.A. County fireman, Larry Owen Moore was born in Whittier, California. As a teen, his jobs included making lunch bags at the Crown Zellerback Corporation, sorting mail at Christmas and cutting fat at Kentucky Fried Chicken. He began surfing as a teenager in Huntington with Belmont Shores neighbor Steve Walden, now a successful shaper. Moore later rode for Harbour Surfboards out of Seal Beach, a team that won the Western Intercollegiate Surfing Council Championship. The shop's owner, Rich Harbour, served as a mentor and hired him for various jobs around the factory. A graduate of Pioneer High School, Moore attended Long Beach State in hopes of becoming a teacher. But with the county facing one of its most turbulent times in history, change was imminent.
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"A friend of mine came by late one night and said he may never see me again," recalls Moore. "He was on his way to Canada to avoid going to Vietnam and he owed me some money. He gave me this Pentax K 1000 with a Takumar 400 lens. Then all my friends wanted me to takes pictures of them surfing." He did, and it wasn't long before The Surf Guide published his first photo, a shot of John Van Ornum taken from atop the Huntington Pier. Harbour, who had a photo lab, suggested Moore take to the water and helped him construct a housing for his camera.
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By the time Moore graduated from college in 1970 (with a minor in photography), he was a regular contributor to Surfing magazine. Spared from Vietnam himself, thanks to surf bumps and other minor ailments, he took a position with the magazine shooting photos and working in the dark room. After quitting to embark on an around-the-world journey, he returned and soon became the magazine's first photo editor. At the time, Surfing was struggling for recognition after a short but tumultuous past, and Moore's work ethic offered the necessary stability. His fiery red hair landed him the nickname "Flame," soon to be one of the most recognizable names in surf photography.
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The simplest way to frame Larry Moore’s life achievement is by the numbers. More surf magazine covers than any other lensman in history, including 43 on Surfing magazine alone. Thirty years as Surfing’s photo editor, during which time he became undoubtedly the most influential single figure in his field. Nurtured, bullied, cajoled and helped develop the talents of a least a dozen of the world’s finest surf photographers, including Aaron Chang, Jeff Hornbaker, Chris Van Lennep, Don King, Pete Frieden, Rob Brown, Aaron Loyd, Dan Merkel, Jeff Flindt, Brian Stephen, Russ Hennings and Scott Winer. Drove surf photo discoveries from Isla Natividad to Cortes Bank. Pioneered or helped pioneer every distinct innovation, technological, creative or otherwise, in surf photography since 1975.That’s the simple way of looking at it, but in a way I think it misses the point, the bigger question, which is: Why? What aggregate of qualities, skills, timing and luck builds a career like Flame’s? Larry himself, being a fairly humble bloke with some belief in the existence of Fate and a profound belief in God, might have said something like: “The camera chose me. The job chose me.”
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Larry Owen Moore was born in Whittier, California on June 17, 1949, learned to surf thanks to his Mom’s love of Huntington Beach, and only came to photography through the actions of a draft-dodging buddy, whose sense of honor over an unpaid $100 debt caused him to knock on Flame’s bedroom window one night in 1970. “Here, this should cover it,” said the buddy, hurriedly handing over a Pentax SLR and a 400-mm Vivitar lens, “you’ll never see me again.” And indeed, Flame didn’t. You’ve gotta wonder, does the guy know what he started?From the beginning, Larry grounded his photography in the hard core of the sport. His first subjects weren’t surf stars, they were his buddies on the Long Beach State surf team; they’d roar up and down PCH looking for waves from Huntington Pier to Oceanside. In the years to come, they were the Salt Creek and San Clemente boys: Mike Cruickshank, Mike Howard, Kevin and Chris Billy, Mike Parsons, George Hulse, Vince de la Pe??a, the Beschens, Dino Andino, Pat O’Connell, Donavon Frankenreiter, Chris Ward, Nate Yeomans, plus a backup cast of numerous typically hot O.C. and North County rippers. While he never shirked the chance to shoot a visiting star, like Larry Bertlemann, Pottz, or Kelly Slater, much of Larry’s genius came from staying connected to these hardcore local roots, while finding ways to grow his surf photography out of them, not despite them. Much of his work was a tribute to that old surfing virtue: local knowledge.
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Conservative by nature, he was never a sucker for old-school ways of thinking. Larry’s classic style of photography — front-lit, perfectly framed, shot for the peak moment of action — wasn’t designed to capture a mood; it was designed to shed light on what was happening in the sport. In fact, as surfing in the USA awoke through the early ’80s and found it was stronger than anyone had so far bothered to tell it, Larry Light was a revolution. Flame’s insistence on white hot, tack-sharp front lighting showcased surfers who were intent on getting themselves and their surfing up to the next level. Like its subjects, it was pro-level performance, and it pushed photographers worldwide to step up and match its technical prowess. That it lifted the fortunes of Larry’s beloved Surfing Magazine in the process seems almost incidental.
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He gave 100 percent of himself to anything or anyone he considered worthy of the effort. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, with help from his wife Candy, Larry rebuilt a 38-foot sailing vessel by hand, from teakwood flooring on up, only to willingly sell up when their son Colin came along in 1988 and devote himself to Colin’s care with the same energy. His superstar photog crew always knew they could rely on that ferocious commitment — and on an unflinching willingness to tell it like it was, whether the news was bad or good. Somehow, Larry was able to bypass the egos and cut straight to the important stuff, to the point where someone as ultra talented as Hornbaker unquestioningly left Flame in total charge of his unprocessed film for almost 20 years; where someone as highly prized as Chang could say that Larry’s the only reason he’s still shooting surf images for surf mags; where someone as gruff as Hank could call him a “father figure”.
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Not that he was ever nice for the sake of it. On the contrary, as a typical redheaded Scotsman, Flame was totally combative and forceful. He made enemies for sure, but most seemed to fit into one of two categories: either lensmen who just couldn’t stand his technical demands, or Tricksters — people with a hidden agenda of some sort, people who by their very nature were unable to keep it all on the table. Larry was combative, but he wasn’t a Trickster.
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It’s just as well he wasn’t, because there’s no tricking a brain tumor. In late 2002, Larry suddenly found himself face to face with a human’s starkest challenge: how to deal with the possibility of impending death. The cancer he contracted — glioblastoma multiforme, grade four — has no known survival rate beyond three years; most people don’t make it through 18 months. Such a sentence was always going to be anathema to Larry. Along with his fighting qualities, he showed abnormal courage and grace in the face of it, carrying himself through all the classic phases, denial, anger, grief, acceptance, with a minimum of drama, while always staying in contact with the things he’d found to matter in his life: his wife and child, his religious faith, and his passion for photography and surfing.–Nick CarrollCourtesy of Surfline
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