A new documentary takes a look behind the camera, featuring the first female water photographer to shoot the prestigious big wave surf event — The Eddie at Waimea Bay.
"It's just this energy pocket that comes into play when they run those events because there's such a concentration of people in the area, and then nature's showing off and it's just amazing and unreal, and all of the things that make shooting wonderful," said Oʻahu photographer Christa Funk, who specializes in surfing and freediving.
Funk is the star of the Red Bull documentary “First In, Last Out.” She said she got into photography in 2013 when she was 13 years old.
"It all started because I had a teacher that noticed I was ahead in computer class. She loaned me her Canon EOS Elan II film camera, and I'd take it home and do assignments for her. And that built up to me being in photography classes in high school, and then journalism, newspaper. So I just, I kept shooting," she told HPR.
After joining the Coast Guard Academy, she put photography on the back burner to focus on school. It wasn't until she was assigned to work in Hawaiʻi that she decided to get back into it.

"I feel like what I'm doing now kind of had this tumbleweed effect. I came out here, and in my free time I started surfing and bodysurfing — I wanted to be in the water every day and I saw an opportunity to do that, and it was amazing. I loved it. I started seeing guys in the water shooting, and I went, 'Oh, I've always wanted to shoot in the water.' And I'd been picking up a camera again too, and that journey began," she said.
Funk shared that the most challenging part of shooting waves is missing some shots.
"I call them the haunting shots, like amazing moments that I was just a little bit out of position for," she said. "I've had to learn to let go of those."
She said that someone she knew from shooting pitched her story to Red Bull. But the whole process took three years.
"Because of that timeline, there's footage of me shooting not this Eddie, but the last Eddie — that was absolutely insane. There's footage in there we wouldn't have gotten if we had a really quick turnaround and tight timeline," she said.
Funk said that it has been an honor to shoot The Eddie twice.
The film is scheduled to premiere Thursday at 7 p.m. at Waimea Valley, with a free release online Friday. For more information, click here.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Jan. 23, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.