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Don King (photographer)

American photographer and filmmaker

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 25, 2025
Entity authorityQ5292922 ↗
Source-derived summary

Don King (born 1960) is an American photographer, cinematographer, and film director. He is best known for his photographic and cinematic images of ocean surface waves and surfing.

Don King was a high school sophomore the first time he sold a photograph. The purchaser was Surfing Magazine, which used it on its cover of an issue.

After graduation from Punahou School in 1978, King attended Stanford University where he majored in psychology, belonged to the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, and was on the Stanford Cardinal water polo team which won the NCAA Men's Water Polo Championships of 1978, 1980 and 1981. He graduated from Stanford in 1983.

Born and raised in Hawaii, Don King lives on Oʻahu with his wife Julianne Yamamoto King and their sons Beau, Aukai and Dane.

Cinematography

This is a very incomplete list of King's camera and direction credits in film and television.

1987: North Shore

1988: The Tribal Trials bodyboarding video with Jack Lindholm, Ben Severson, and Mike Stewart

1994: The Endless Summer II

1995: The Living Sea

1997: "Tidal Wave" episode, Discovery Channel Raging Planet series

1998: City of Angels

1999: Surfing for Life

2000: Cast Away

2001: "The Big Squish" and "Blue Holes" episodes, National Geographic Channel The Next Wave series

2002: Heart of the Sea, award-winning documentary of the life of surfing champion Rell Sunn.

2002: Blue Crush

2002: Die Another Day

2002: "Condition Black" episode, Nature series

2003: Step into Liquid

2004: Riding Giants

2005: "Violent Hawaii" episode, Nature series

2005: Lords of Dogtown

2006: Beautiful Son

2008: Forgetting Sarah Marshall 2nd Unit D.P.

2009: Dear John water unit D.P.

2010: Hereafter water camera operator

2011: Soul Surfer 2nd unit D.P., B-camera operator

2011: The Descendants water camera operator

2011: Just Go With It water camera operator

2011: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides water camera operator

2011: Off the Map water camera operator, B-camera operator

2012: Battleship water camera operator, C-camera operator

Television

2003-2010: Lost camera operator 6 seasons

2008 Entourage

2007: Lost episode, season 3 finale "Through the Looking Glass"

Commercials

American Express "Laird" - Director, Cinematographer

Cool Water/Davidoff - Director, cinematographer

Apple - water cinematographer

Armani - water cinematographer

Hyundai - water cinematographer

Coca-Cola - water cinematographer

Guinness - water cinematographer

Norwegian Cruise lines - water cinematographer

Johnson & Johnson - water cinematographer

Maytag - water cinematographer

Toyota -water cinematographer

Weight Watchers -water cinematographer

E Harmony -water cinematographer

Kaiser -water cinematographer

2006: SHISEIDO TSUBAKI in Japan - water cinematographer

2011: Nike Commercial water cinematographer

Music Video

Mariah Carey

Sugarland

One thing that earns King such raves is his mellow personality—in a type-A industry, he's renowned for keeping his cool.

Editorial summary

“Don King (photographer)” enters the record as american photographer and filmmaker. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what King, photographer and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1960, 1978, 1980, 1981—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1960-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around King, photographer and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Don King (photographer)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, King, photographer and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5292922. VIAF identifies the subject as 61687321. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 1978, 1980 and 1981.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Don King (photographer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.