Water throws a lot of extra challenges at a photographer and it takes a lot of time, effort (and equipment) to learn the technical part of shooting. But that’s probably the easiest part to master. There’s also the art of finding critters, predicting their behavior, not disturbing them and having the patience to wait for it’s decisive moment (if it happens at all). I truly respect people who are able to do that but to me scuba diving is a rare chance to get away from my busy life. So I’ve never been very interested in mixing this peace of diving with photography, except for the occasional snapshot to serve as a memory to a beautiful day. But last Saturday, I tried it for the first time anyway.

With a couple of people from my diving club, we went to a familiar diving spot in the Netherlands, called “Bergse Diep” or “Oesterdam” for a night dive. I brought my underwater camera because I was curious to see how it would perform in combination with an underwater flash. When I’m testing out new stuff, I usually follow a predetermined test routing but this time I just wanted to get a feel of it by maybe taking some snapshots.

“Bergse Diep” is one of the easiest salt water dive spots in the area and it looked absolutely stunning when we arrived there. The setting sun was gently caressing the unusual smooth water surface. The prospect of catching a glimpse of the Sepias who come to mate here this time of year, made things even more interesting.

Once we went down, things looked a lot less favorable. The visibility was practically zero, and I really mean ZERO, I had to bring my dive computer straight up the the front of my mask to see how deep I was. On top of that my buddy and I had some minor gear and ear issues to deal with. After ten minutes we decided that there was no fun in this and we agreed to turn back and continue our dive at a depth of only 2 meters where the visibility was slightly better. I started by making some uninspired snaps of common critters just to check the flash. Soon, I discovered that by trying to shoot these animals, I looked at them a lot better than I would normally do. The first model was a shrimp. We see them all the time, but I must admit that I’ve never noticed the beautiful patterns and colors until I tried to take a picture of one.

Next up were some crabs. For most divers (including me) they just belong to the decor and don’t seem worth a second glance. We always look for the rare stuff and forget how amazed we were to see a crab running around on the bottom during our very first dive.

After our dive, we overheard a conversation between two other divers about how they hate jellyfish. We strongly disagreed in silence, still amazed by the extra terrestrial grace we witnessed from these completely harmless creatures.

I’m sorry if I bore you with my underwater photography experiments but it’s just too much fun not to talk about. Below is a quick post-dive portrait of an old friend and the woman who’s to blame for all of this. Last year, in the darkest days of my life, she convinced me to take up diving again. Thx Lente.

During this first attempt, I struggled with flash placement, settings, low light focusing, and the reflecting suspended particles. But I still enjoyed this dive a lot and despite the photography aspect, it didn’t feel like work. Stay tuned for more.