Within one second after I made the previous image, my burst-shooting mode caught the same pair of surfers in action. The wave now seems to explode beneath them. The surfer in the foreground, who seemed to be doing so well only a second earlier, is abruptly pitched backwards. His body language expresses futility, and he looks skyward in frustration. He will go no further on this run. Meanwhile, the surfer in the rear seems to have stopped abruptly as well. He still rests on his knees, but he, too, is left behind in the wake of this wave. This image shows us that surfing is a sport where skill does not always triumph. Sometimes nature plays its own hand, and the surfers must try again.