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I went scuba diving today! Ok, ok, it wasn't the Great Barrier Reef, or some exotic location in
the Caribbean. It was in 15 feet of water in the pool on Fordham University's
Rose Hill Campus... The assignment was to photograph a scuba diving class. "It's too bad
I don't have an underwater camera," I said to the editor, to which he
replied: "I think we have one, but someone's probably taken it on vacation."
When I suggested getting one of those underwater point and shoots, the
editor said: "It's not a layout, it's only one picture." In fact, he paged me back to emphasize it was only one picture and not to kill myself. (I think they now recognize my modus operandi at the Daily News...shoot as if it's a documentary...) But, for the rest of the day, until the assignment that evening, I debated
about buying a point and shoot, just to have... just in case. Instead,
I called the scuba instructor, who told me he had several underwater cameras
and he'd be happy to loan them to me for the class. I wondered if this
was considered cheating. Mindful of the editor's instructions, I got my shots from the side of
the pool but then it was so hot, I couldn't resist getting wet. I was
given a mask and instructed in the basics of snorkeling. At this point,
I only had the use of the Nikonos without a strobe, with a 35 mm. lens,
which I loaded with 800 speed film. Focusing is very different because
of refraction, making subjects appear closer than they actually are .
When I got the hang of the mask and the fact that I could actually see
underwater, I was confident that I'd get something way cool. But I was still pretty much stuck on the surface of the water, while
my divers had gone down to the deep water, 15 feet and way too far away
from me for pictures. Sensing my disappointment, one of the instructors
asked me if I wanted to dive. I actually had no intention of going any
further from the surface than the snorkel equipment would allow. But a
half hour later, I had checked out the Buoyance Compositor Device, and
I had all the accoutrements necessary for scuba diving, sans wetsuit.
Before I left the side of the pool, he had me taking the mouthpiece in
and out underwater to make sure I could safely do that without having
to surface. Once I had the basics safely in hand, he handed me a camera
with a strobe and put weights in my vest and I started down to the deep
water. In the meantime, the water suddenly was teeming....not with tropical
fish, but with kids from a swimming class. They were a little unnerving,
but made for some great pictures....all those little legs. All I could
think of was one of the scenes from Jaws! Around 10 feet, I got cold feet. I had to surface once because I got
a little confused about what was what. I had this mouthpiece with oxygen
going into my lungs, remembering to b-r-e-a-t-h-e, but I also had 2 cameras
dangling around my neck. It was an incredible feeling of almost being
weightless, even though I was essentially sinking to the bottom. I didn't
have a clue how to work the cameras but I just kept shooting until my
two rolls of film were finished. No sooner did I have visions of being
Jacques Cousteau reincarnated when we had to vacate the pool because the
pool was closing. Darn! And I was having such a good time. When I got downtown, there were no usable images from the Nikonos, the
one I'd loaded with 800 speed film. All of the images were either out
of focus, or there was too much movement; perhaps if I'd had noticed that
I was underexposing everything, I might have set a different shutter speed,
or... something. However, the other camera with the strobe...wow! I'd
only shot half a roll (most of the time I was concentrating on keeping
the oxygen flowing into my lungs...) But I had 3 or 4 usable images. It
was sheer luck. The only thing was... they'd loaded the camera with 200
speed film, the thinking being "coral reef...Caribbean... lots of sunlight,
not fluorescent light..." so while the strobe lit up my divers perfectly,
there wasn't much depth (no pun intended) in the images. I'm afraid the scuba bug has bit me. I asked my husband if he wanted
to join me in scuba diving lessons. He said: "I can't swim..." I said: "Hey Bob, you don't need to know how to swim. There's oxygen
under those there waters.
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Susan
Markisz
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Contributor
since 1998
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Behind
the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism |
