About twelve years ago I took scuba diving lessons with my teenage son and subsequently got hooked up with a group diving in the South Pacific. I’ve done nearly 500 dives since then. Photographing underwater was the next natural step. My wife bought me my first Nikonos underwater camera for my birthday and I was hooked. I take two dive trips a year and have gotten to some very exotic places.

Photographing underwater is tricky enough, plus there is a lot of gear to manage. Since almost all color is absorbed by the water, you need to bring your own sunlight with you in the form of powerful strobes to illuminate your subject. Plus, you obviously can’t change lenses underwater so you have to make your lens selection before you dive (Macro or wide angle?) and hope that you have indeed brought the right lens. Complicating things is the fact that you can’t get your subject to sit still for any length of time or even keep looking at you. Plus, you’re under water!

My presentation will include an introduction to the challenges of underwater photography, an overview of the equipment and a slideshow of underwater images.