Manual of Underwater Photography

One night about fifteen years ago | gave a shde show on the shores of the Red Sea. My wife, ANNA, and I were in Eilat, Israel shooting an assignment for National Geographic Magazine. Our friend, HARVEY, was in Eilat on vacation taking a Scuba ding course. He asked me to show some E underwater pictures to his class. We sat on the beach in front of the AQUA-SPORT Di\iNG CENTRE. The screen rippled slowly in the evening breeze and halfway through the show the moon rose over the mountains of Jordan across the Gulf of Aquaba. The next morning, as HARVEY reported, the class discussed underwater photography. Everyone in the class was fairly impressed by the images from the sea except SHLOMO, a huge nineteen year old Israeli paratrooper who knew everything and whose self-assurance stretched to the known corners of the universe. He said: “Underwater photography, easy. Jump in to the water, you see the fish, you take the picture. Easy.” HARVEY looked at him sideways and replied: “Brain surgery. Easy. You open the ‚ head, you fix the head, you close the head. Easy.” SHLOMO'’s views on underwater photography became my sloca, my mantra. His word still rattle around my brain. I have said them to myself in the throes of seasickness while rolling around on some torture ship in some godforsaken corner of the Pacific. [ have murmured the sloca while stmulitaneously running out of air and pumping in some horrendous current. Il have hummed SHLOMO's words while gazing in despair at drops of water racing down the inside of the port of my camera housing; or trying to make the damn strobe ftre; or seeing mating sharks and having no film left. “Underwater photography. Easy. You jump in to the water. See the fish. Take the picture. Easy.” It is a quote very much ike that good old Australian saying, “No worries, mate” which of course translates to “Worries, usually big worries.” Underwater photography may possibly be the most difficult branch in all of photography. It puts extraordinary demands on the photographer and it happens in an environment which is completely alien to our everyday lives. You can be twenty minutes outside of Sydney Harbour but once you put your head underwater you are on the far side of the moon. Divers make regular journeys to distant secret lands and when they return they bring back a new way of viewing our planet and a new perspective on their lives. I can be walking down a crowded midtown Manhattan street full of buses and taxis, honking horns, and hordes of people when suddenly [Pl dream of purple nudibranchs and schools of orange Anthias fishes or an oceanic white-tip shark gliding across the blue curtain of the sea.