Any tips in taking great photographs?
First, you should be a good diver. I think about 100 dives’ experience is good enough. Then, you need to find equipment. Don’t be tied to your current camera, because it’s much easier to sell it and buy a new one than to find good housing with a reasonable price. A used camera is a good choice for diving photography. It will take a lot of time to develop underwater photography skills—it differs a lot from other kinds of photography. Study what other underwater photographers are doing, know the trends, but don’t go along with all of them.
Can you tell us about your work, Sardine Run? What was your experience like in shooting this project?
Diving near the baitball is one of the most amazing adrenalin-full experiences in a life. Scuba diving is usually a very silent thing… not in this case. Dolphin’s attack on sardines starts with very loud high-frequency whistle – dolphins communicate with each other to coordinate the attack. In a seconds a whistle is followed by pack of dolphins, charging themselves into a baitball, usually from down to up. Sardines are trying to escape, so the baitball curves itself like a liquid, approaching the surface… and it comes close enough for gannets to reach them. Cape gannets are very good divers: they fall from 20-30m into the water with a speed up to 120 km/h, diving to 10-12m deep. The water around instantly becomes full of bubbles – traces of the birds. If the bird hits you, that would be a trouble… But they have very good sight, so it’s not a threat to divers. The sound of birds entering the water is also very loud – it’s like someone smashing the giant hammer into water.
What message do you want to convey in your photographs?
I’m trying to explore the border between reality and surreality. My works are in the same time real (as they are documentory photography) and unreal. I love the works of Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali, and I try to follow their directions in my photographs.
Do you have any new projects that you’re working on right now?
I’m going to visit Komodo island (Indonesia) on NY. This island is famous for it’s dragons, but underwater it’s also a great place with huge biodiversity. I hope to get some nice macro-shots and fisheye ones (I recently added fisheye lens to my equipment, so I want to train with it).
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