Years and years ago, we made a strange, fun little film called Legend of the Iron Seahorse. It wasn’t the usual surf film. To make it, we invited Leah Dawson to NLand Surf Park, the now defunct wave pool in Austin, Texas. I’d only met Leah in passing a handful of times over the course of the years and I hadn’t ever surfed in a wave pool, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
I didn’t do much on that film — mostly just picking through the racks at used clothing stores looking for Western gear — but it was an incredibly fun trip. I soon learned that Leah is not only one of the most innovative and stylish surfers on Earth, but also one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending time with.
From the outset, it was clear that Leah has a special relationship with riding waves. All surfers do, I think, but Leah’s seemed a little more intimate. She grew up in Florida, hanging off the nose of her dad’s surfboard and when she was old enough, she made the move to Hawaii, where she blossomed into the creative powerhouse she is today.
“When it came time to move away from home,” she says about her move to Oahu. “I knew that I wanted to move somewhere that was close to the water. I felt like there was a magnet pulling me here. My parents always told me to follow my dreams, and I followed them right to Hawaii.”
It’s tough these days to find a surfer with a truly unique style, but Leah is one of the few who’ve managed to do it. She surfs right on the edge with a sort of limber-limbed looseness. She’s a surfer who doesn’t attack the wave, instead preferring to join forces with it, harnessing whatever energy that particular wave is offering.
As is often the case with people like Leah, her life has revolved around surfing. When the opportunity arose to work as a production assistant on the Triple Crown, she leapt at it, despite not having all that much experience.
“At the beginning of the show, they needed someone to run the roving camera,” she remembers. “I just put my hand up and said, ‘put me in, coach. I want to do this.’ I know what a good frame looks like and I’m quite confident I can nail it.”
Leah has an interesting wonderful outlook on life. It’s very similar to the way she rides waves — free flowing, adaptable, open to whatever comes next, and hell-bent on enjoying every second of it.
“It’s been such a joy to be a camera operator for my favorite sport and not only be present for some of surfing’s greatest moments in the last 15 years, but also be a part of them,” she says about her career. “To have the world see what I see.”
