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FLAME: RIP
Legendary photo editor Larry "Flame" Moore passes away

LARRY "FLAME" MOORE
Surf photographer, photo editor

June 17, 1948 - October 10, 2005

The simplest way to frame Larry Moore's life achievement is by the numbers. More surf magazine covers than any other lensman in history, including 43 on Surfing magazine alone. Thirty years as Surfing's photo editor, during which time he became undoubtedly the most influential single figure in his field. Nurtured, bullied, cajoled and helped develop the talents of a least a dozen of the world's finest surf photographers, including Aaron Chang, Jeff Hornbaker, Chris Van Lennep, Don King, Pete Frieden, Rob Brown, Aaron Loyd, Dan Merkel, Jeff Flindt, Brian Stephen, Russ Hennings and Scott Winer. Drove surf photo discoveries from Isla Natividad to Cortes Bank. Pioneered or helped pioneer every distinct innovation, technological, creative or otherwise, in surf photography since 1975.

That's the simple way of looking at it, but in a way I think it misses the point, the bigger question, which is: Why? What aggregate of qualities, skills, timing and luck builds a career like Flame's? Larry himself, being a fairly humble bloke with some belief in the existence of Fate and a profound belief in God, might have said something like: "The camera chose me. The job chose me."

Larry Owen Moore was born in Whittier, California on June 17, 1949, learned to surf thanks to his Mom's love of Huntington Beach, and only came to photography through the actions of a draft-dodging buddy, whose sense of honor over an unpaid $100 debt caused him to knock on Flame's bedroom window one night in 1970. "Here, this should cover it," said the buddy, hurriedly handing over a Pentax SLR and a 400-mm Vivitar lens, "you'll never see me again." And indeed, Flame didn't. You've gotta wonder, does the guy know what he started?

From the beginning, Larry grounded his photography in the hard core of the sport. His first subjects weren't surf stars, they were his buddies on the Long Beach State surf team; they'd roar up and down PCH looking for waves from Huntington Pier to Oceanside. In the years to come, they were the Salt Creek and San Clemente boys: Mike Cruickshank, Mike Howard, Kevin and Chris Billy, Mike Parsons, George Hulse, Vince de la Peña, the Beschens, Dino Andino, Pat O'Connell, Donavon Frankenreiter, Chris Ward, Nate Yeomans, plus a backup cast of numerous typically hot O.C. and North County rippers. While he never shirked the chance to shoot a visiting star, like Larry Bertlemann, Pottz, or Kelly Slater, much of Larry's genius came from staying connected to these hardcore local roots, while finding ways to grow his surf photography out of them, not despite them. Much of his work was a tribute to that old surfing virtue: local knowledge.

Conservative by nature, he was never a sucker for old-school ways of thinking. Larry's classic style of photography -- front-lit, perfectly framed, shot for the peak moment of action -- wasn't designed to capture a mood; it was designed to shed light on what was happening in the sport. In fact, as surfing in the USA awoke through the early '80s and found it was stronger than anyone had so far bothered to tell it, Larry Light was a revolution. Flame's insistence on white hot, tack-sharp front lighting showcased surfers who were intent on getting themselves and their surfing up to the next level. Like its subjects, it was pro-level performance, and it pushed photographers worldwide to step up and match its technical prowess. That it lifted the fortunes of Larry's beloved Surfing Magazine in the process seems almost incidental.

He gave 100 percent of himself to anything or anyone he considered worthy of the effort. In the late 1970s and early '80s, with help from his wife Candy, Larry rebuilt a 38-foot sailing vessel by hand, from teakwood flooring on up, only to willingly sell up when their son Colin came along in 1988 and devote himself to Colin's care with the same energy. His superstar photog crew always knew they could rely on that ferocious commitment -- and on an unflinching willingness to tell it like it was, whether the news was bad or good. Somehow, Larry was able to bypass the egos and cut straight to the important stuff, to the point where someone as ultra talented as Hornbaker unquestioningly left Flame in total charge of his unprocessed film for almost 20 years; where someone as highly prized as Chang could say that Larry's the only reason he's still shooting surf images for surf mags; where someone as gruff as Hank could call him a "father figure".

Not that he was ever nice for the sake of it. On the contrary, as a typical redheaded Scotsman, Flame was totally combative and forceful. He made enemies for sure, but most seemed to fit into one of two categories: either lensmen who just couldn't stand his technical demands, or Tricksters -- people with a hidden agenda of some sort, people who by their very nature were unable to keep it all on the table. Larry was combative, but he wasn't a Trickster.

It's just as well he wasn't, because there's no tricking a brain tumor. In late 2002, Larry suddenly found himself face to face with a human's starkest challenge: how to deal with the possibility of impending death. The cancer he contracted -- glioblastoma multiforme, grade four -- has no known survival rate beyond three years; most people don't make it through 18 months. Such a sentence was always going to be anathema to Larry. Along with his fighting qualities, he showed abnormal courage and grace in the face of it, carrying himself through all the classic phases, denial, anger, grief, acceptance, with a minimum of drama, while always staying in contact with the things he'd found to matter in his life: his wife and child, his religious faith, and his passion for photography and surfing.

Larry Moore died peacefully early in the morning of October 10 at his home in Dana Point, California. He is survived by his wife, Candy, and son Colin Moore. --Nick Carroll