Key Points
- Dave “Nelly” Nelson’s 2000 SURFER cover shot was a pivotal career moment.
- Nelson’s reputation rests on both photographic skill and keeping surf spot secrets.
- Success of the cover shot led to numerous job opportunities and long-term industry work.
It was back in December, 2024 at the Turtle Bay while having drinks with big wave legend, Jamie Sterling, that I met another legend—only this one was more known for his work behind the lens—Dave “Nelly” Nelson.
After sharing that I worked for SURFER, Nelly told me, “I got a pretty rad cover shot of my buddy Adam Repogle for Surfer back in 2000. That was a big moment in my career.” Little did I know how our paths would weave later down the line and how that story would reveal itself. You can check out more of Nelly’s work in his book “Dual Perspective”.
Fast forward to March, 2026 and I had just dealt with moving out of a place on the North Shore stewarded by a psycho landlord which wasn’t how I wanted to wrap up a winter in a place I loved so much. Not long after I saw a post on Instagram and messaged Nelly about staying in his casita for a few days and it couldn’t have been more different than my previous situation.
Dual Perspective
In the casita was a framed issue of the cover shot Nelly had told me about. The photo and cover are striking because it’s almost as if Repogle is framing his own face for the shot while the wave envelopes and frames his body, so perfectly poised that the gap between himself and the wave seems microscopic.
As many old SURFER covers did, there was a bit of a sensational tagline, ‘California Secret Spots Revealed’–only thing is, this one wasn’t revealed. When I talked to Nelly about it, he was intentionally vague, throughout his entire career he developed a reputation as not only a master lensman—but as someone who could keep a secret. The wave in question was what he considers a “semi-secret spot”, more people know about it than would ever dare to try and surf it. Access is prohibited, locals are next-level gnarly, and conditions are fickle.
Nelly came up in Santa Cruz and was thoroughly embedded with the best surfers of the fabled surf town. Guys like Repogle, Shawn “Barney” Barron, Darryl “Flea” Virotskos, Peter Mel, and Ken “Skindog” Colins, Nat Young, Darshawn Gooch and many others were all regular accomplices when it came to chasing waves and nailing shots.
Repogle is someone he watched come up from gromhood into adulthood and, in his prime, Nelly says, “he was one of the best in the world, so well respected everywhere he went. Guys still call me to talk about sessions he had and crazy waves he caught”.
The cover shot was a result of a rare set up of conditions that created back-to-back glory days at the spot. Nelly had been there on the first day and scored, on the second he convinced a reluctant Repogle to come along. “We were somewhere else and Adam had already suited up and peed himself since he was about to paddle out. I saw the tide was getting too high. I convinced him to get in the car and head up the road another 15 minutes–he was fuming. He thought we were going to get skunked.”
“The first day was tough to figure out, I kept being in the wrong spot and getting worked. There was so much water moving and I was still pretty new to shooting in the water so I took some beatings. By the second day I had it more dialed and got great shots but I didn’t think I had landed a cover.”
“At the time, I had been submitting photos to Larry “Flame” Moore who was the photo editor at Surfing Magazine and, back then, it was a big no-no to try and shoot for both. I had recently sent them some images that they had passed over so I decided to send this batch to SURFER. It wasn’t until some weeks later, when I was coming back from a trip from Mexico did I even find out. One of my friends got the news first and then he surprised me at the newsstand at LAX—there it was plastered all along the row with the surf mags. I couldn’t believe it.”
“After that, things really took off. I got invited on trips back-to-back-to-back and eventually landed my job with Vans and started shooting heavily with John John, Nate Fletcher and their whole crew for 15 years. I also worked for O’Neill and was able to balance out both of those gigs and was just grinding and creating images. I shot so much it took me hundreds, if not thousands, of hours to edit my book.”
You can order Nelly’s book here.
About the author
Writer, SURFER
Chris Dodds grew up between the beaches of Rio and the American Midwest. After studying journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder, he worked a series of odd and sometimes wonderful jobs—from working at a surf shop on the Malibu Pier to documenting mezcaleros in Oaxaca to an eventual role with a startup surf travel company called Thermal.
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