Editor’s note: You may recognize the name Brian Cozzie for his regular appearance with the weekly best of the Long Island Sun Chasers. Brian has a unique style and I can usually identify his shots before confirmation that they are his. As soon as I saw some of his photography of Surfers in action as Jose passed I knew they would be perfect for a feature. Out of respect to the the surfing community we won’t give specific locations and just say South Shore of Nassau County.
By Brian Cozzie
I got into photography simply because my father saw my cell phone shots and thought I had an eye for it. He had me play around with his old Olympus Bridge camera, a whopping 5 mega pixels, look out world here I come! Fast forward a month later and I hit my ceiling with that camera and I was already dropping $500 on my first entry level DSLR camera, a Nikon D3200. I spent a year with that camera, the hobby became an obsession, and after a year I knew I wanted to do more, and was already researching full frame Nikon’s.
Fast forward to today, I have had some mild success with pictures on the cover and inside of a travel magazine and another full page photo in Newsday. It has all been very humbling, but I know I can do better, and I always set the next goal higher than the last. After 4 years of playing with neutral density filters and long exposure photography, I have turned my eye to surf photography, and what better way than to head down to the best surf spots on Long Island during hurricane season.
Enjoy the photos, the people riding out on those monster waves are the real heroes of this story though.
More images on pages 2, 3 and 4
