SubThoughts

Yesterday we launched through a turgid Umzimvubu River at Port St Johns in search of bait balls. The sardine run this year has been good to our team, graciously offering up moments of drama that will undoubtedly make it into the final cut, but in the world of natural history documentaries, one can never have enough interesting animal behavior. A quick recce of the area north towards Waterfall Bluff confirmed our suspicions — after the rain that has lashed the east coast of South Africa over the last few days, we are going to have to patiently wait for the one critical variable that makes its all possible — decent visibility.

Documenting the natural world underwater is challenging on a number of fronts. There are the variables you can control, such as the quality and condition of your equipment, your level of diving fitness and skill, and your knowledge of an area, and then there are the those over which you have no control whatsoever — the light conditions, the visibility, the swell, the presence or absence of animals. When these variables all come together to offer up that optimal moment, there are few things more rewarding than capturing that moment for others to share and enjoy.

The recent advances in digital camera technology have encouraged many sport divers to get back into the water, armed with affordable video and stills equipment capable of capturing the kind of quality image that a few years ago was the reserve of the pro shooter. In this blog I’m going to explore the various dimensions of this discipline of underwater photography, some of which I suspect reach way back into our evolutionary past. For if sport evolved as a proxy for hunting and war, then the art of photography should perhaps be considered one of the purest sports around.

But more on that later. Right now we sit patiently waiting for cleaner water, spending time at sea getting a feel for the animal activity, getting ready that moment of truth when we must not fail.