Brandon Kirk was on the North Shore of Oahu, in Hawaii, when he captured a surfer silhouetted against a massive setting sun in January 2025.
The image he captured, which he titled “Blaze of Glory,” created much buzz for his photography career. And now, it’s the featured image in his monthlong exhibit, “From the South Bay to the North Shore,” which will open at Culture Brewing, 327 Manhattan Beach Blvd., in Manhattan Beach on Thursday, June 4. The opening reception will take place from 4 to 7 p.m.
“My wife (Wendy Kirk) and I had been having dinner two years prior to that at this exact location, looking across this bay at the setting sun, and there were some guys out on this lava peninsula, North Shore of Oahu, fishing, and they were silhouetted against the setting sun,” Kirk said. “That image just stuck in my head. I was like, ‘I got to get this shot.’ So for the rest of that winter, with my big wave surfing friends in Oahu, I tried to position them in the right days and the right places to get the shot.”
But it took two winters for Kirk to get that perfect image — where “everything just aligned.”
“There’s actually nothing but ocean between me and him, so I had to get a giant zoom lens to make that sun look particularly large,” Kirk said. “But the magic of this image was the haziness. This is very much like a sort of a desert sunset. When sand is blowing in the desert, there’s a lot of particulate matter. You get sunsets that look like this. Don’t often get that in Hawaii, because you’re in the middle of an ocean.”
Kirk said to a surfer friend, “’Hey, I’m not sure I’m even going to be able to see.’ That’s how hazy it was.”
“So, I just sort of watched and waited as that sun dropped right into position,” Kirk said. “Then I saw it went from that bright yellow into the orange and gold and red. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I knew I had something.”
Brandon Kirk’s month-long exhibit, ‘From the South Bay to the North Shore,’ opens Thursday, June 4, at Culture Brewing in Manhattan Beach. Pictured is ‘Harmony’ by Kirk. (Photo courtesy Brandon Kirk)
Brandon Kirk’s month-long exhibit, ‘From the South Bay to the North Shore,’ opens Thursday, June 4, at Culture Brewing in Manhattan Beach. Pictured is ‘Lone Surfer’ by Kirk. (Photo courtesy Brandon Kirk)
Brandon Kirk pictured with one of his pieces that will be on display for one month beginning Thursday, June 4, at the ‘From the South Bay to the North Shore,’ exhibit at Culture Brewing in Manhattan Beach. (Photo by Michael Hixon/SCNG)
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Brandon Kirk’s month-long exhibit, ‘From the South Bay to the North Shore,’ opens Thursday, June 4, at Culture Brewing in Manhattan Beach. Pictured is ‘Harmony’ by Kirk. (Photo courtesy Brandon Kirk)
Besides his 12-foot wide, 8-foot tall “Blaze of Glory” image that will be able to be seen walking by Culture Brewing, Kirk, who lives in West Los Angeles, will have more than 40 images displayed throughout June.
On June 11, Kirk, with the South Bay Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, will host a panel discussion with big wave surfers Anthony Teitelbaum, Katie McConnell and Trevor Collins — who are originally from Southern California.
Video clips and photography from big wave breaks, including Waimea Bay, Jaws and Mavericks, will part of the discussion and question-and-answer session, as well as a “show and tell” focusing on equipment used in big wave surfing.
Kirk was focused on school sports photography when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
He turned to beach and surf photography and it was local surfers buying photos of themselves that “helped keep me afloat during that transition.”
To pay homage to those surfers, Kirk said, the exhibit will feature more than two dozen images of South Bay surfers he captured at local beaches.
“They’re the ones that first met me when I went on the beach to start shooting during the summer of the early days of the pandemic,” Kirk said. “I’m going to pin one up on the wall. I’m going to keep another in a folder to give to them when they come here to see the exhibition.”
Taking snaps of those local surfers was the training ground for what led to “Blaze of Glory.”
“Blaze of Glory” led to Sony publishing the image and the story behind it on its Alpha Universe platform and Bruce Brown Films, which was behind the classic surf film “The Endless Summer,” which published the image on its Instagram page.
With that success, Kirk left his job as a school sports photographer to pursue surf and ocean photography full time.
Kirk’s work has been seen locally at Destination: Art in Torrance, Fiesta Hermosa, the Manhattan Beach Hometown Fair and the El Segundo Art Walk.
Kirk spent six weeks in Hawaii this year.
“I realized last year when I came back from from this trip that if I can capture sort of jaw-dropping images of big beautiful waves that you just don’t see every day and certainly aren’t captured on a camera every day, I can be successful selling those,” Kirk said. “They’re unusual, they’re unique and so that’s sort of the direction I’m going with my photography now, is looking for those really unique, amazing opportunities and chasing them down, hunting them wherever they may be.”
Kirk will also host an event with the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce on june 17.
“From the South Bay to the North Shore,” meanwhile, will run through June 28.
For more information, visit brandonkirk.com.