The Inertia has the info.  I'm sure others were doing good surf and motorcycling filming at the time, but I'm impressed at what he was able to do when color film was slow, figuring out exposures took a hand-held meter, focus was manual, there wasn't the mass of outdoor and water equipment we have today (although there was lots of interest in water photography) and of course film was expensive and a small operator like Brown didn't have a studio lab to do quick processing.  

And Brown was daring and creative about selling his work.