I spent two years as a graduate student in Applied Ocean Sciences at the world-famous Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. This was approximately 1988. Macs were still in their infancy, but I had started with the original Mac in 1983 and used a Mac (SE?) while I was at Scripps. I used Word 5.1a, which did everything I needed it to and which I wish were still around. Lately I have been trying to find a way to convert all these Word 5.1a files, which I could convert to newer Word format files using Word X for the Mac. With Mac's OS 10.7 and 10.8, which did away with the Rosetta emulator allowing Power-PC-based programs like MS Word X to work, I have lost the ability to open my old Word 5.1a files. I am seeking someone who can write me an Applescript to open all those old Word 5.1a files on my last Snow Leopard machine. Those files just need to be opened in Word X and then saved.
Back to the story. I was not a very good graduate student. The Applied Ocean Sciences program was for engineers interested in oceanography. I had graduated from Stanford with degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering, which is why the faculty at Scripps were interested in having me attend the school (and become their slave). But to be honest, I always knew that I was not that great an engineer. I was fine at software stuff, and I had even spent a year as a software analyst in Silicon Valley after getting my masters degree in mechanical engineering (computer science specialty) at Stanford. But I was just not that brilliant at doing stuff in the physical world, which is what Scripps oceanographers wanted. I had come to Scripps already a serious underwater photographer, and I had had a portfolio and photographs published in those old, now-deceased, but great publications Sea Frontiers and Underwater USA. Remember those magazines?
I had envisioned spending my time at Scripps by somehow combining my interest in underwater photography with oceanography. Unfortunately, the reality of being a graduate student is that you need to find an adviser to fund you. All advisors have their own specialties and interests -- and no one at Scripps was interested in what I wanted to do. My first advisor wanted me to work on a gravity meter. My second advisor was more interested in underwater optics than anything having to deal with marine natural history. And I was unfortunately completely and totally fascinated by marine life rather than the physics of water.
The field of marine biology is a tough one.
{It’s not as fun as it used to be, and there is little money
available.} One fellow student at Scripps finally received his
doctorate, after eight years of hard work. His job prospects
are dim; every job he has applied for has had a minimum of 70
applicants, and as many as 200.
Nowadays, many marine biologists seem less concerned
with natural history than their predecessors were. Scientists
in the old days had many mysteries to solve. Where did eels go
to spawn? Where did sea turtles spend the first two years of
their life? What exactly were these strange life forms trawled
up from the deep? Good science is no longer so simple.
Most marine labs have turned to biochemistry and other
laboratory-oriented research -- research areas that can yield quick
results and are good candidates for research funding. Field
biologists are few and far between, and their financial situations
are often dire.
In some ways, natural history photographers have
taken over the role filled by old-time naturalists/scientists looking
to represent and explain the big picture. While a modern
research scientist may be forced to spend months and years studying a
very small issue, I have the luxury of presenting my work without the
burden of proof he or she must bear. The fact that I catch
something on film makes it valid, and sometimes valuable.
I visited a man named Howard Hall, who lived in a suburb of San Diego. He had written a book called Successful Underwater Photography, which was my Bible back then. This was the first book that I had come across which explained how to take good underwater photographs with the equipment available those days. It was a deceptively simple, very clear book -- and I am sure that dozens if not hundreds of underwater photographers got their start with that book. Howard was just starting to think about doing a one-hour film on California's marine life; and he invited me to join him shark diving off the San Diego coast. I immediately accepted, and had a great time when the day came, getting my first glimpse of wild sharks, and having a 6-foot mako shark pass me by very closely. I was excited, thrilled.
The only problem was that the next day, I ran into my advisor at Scripps. I had missed a meeting with him on the day of the shark dive and had completely forgotten about it. When he asked why I had missed the meeting, I naively told him the truth -- that I had gone shark diving instead. I innocently thought that he would be as thrilled as I was. Of course he wasn't. That was pretty much the end of my time at Scripps.
I spent more time in San Diego, and I worked as an assistant diver on Howard Hall's film
Seasons on the Sea, which went on to win all kinds of awards. I spent many more days diving with the blue and mako sharks off the coast of San Diego. Marty Snyderman and Bob Cranston had a business bringing divers on these shark dives, and I was fortunate enough to be able to tag along on some of them and get in the water to shoot once in a while. (Thanks Marty and Bob! Marty -- see, I am giving you credit for being the first San Diego shark diver guy. Bob, I know you don't care about getting credit and just want to be in the water).
One of my first-ever assignments was for an advertising agency who wanted me to photograph a menacing shark near a diver.
After the shoot, I wrote an article for PDN -- Photo District News. I probably have that article and the ad in the files somewhere and will post a scan here if and when I find it. Here's the text to the article (which I found in my computer files as a Word 5.1a file -- thanks Word X and Snow Leopard!).
Reading this article brings me back to those old days. I was just starting out as an underwater photographer, and I had a pretty high opinion of my photographic abilities back then. It seems that all budding serious underwater photographers think that they are the bomb if they bring back a few decent images. I have lost track of how many egotistical young divers have approached me armed with some underwater images that they call "abstract". By taking these "abstract" images, they consider themselves "artists."
I have my own view. I think that you are a technician, someone who might be able to take technically decent images that are in focus and have the correct exposure, as a serious beginner. Some folks never get past being good technicians. You see their photos all the time -- they love their own work, but it is missing that spark; it's usually a straightforward documentation of an animal. Photographers who become serious will move beyond the technician stage, and by shooting more and more (and these days, shooting thousands of images on one subject) will usually get a few images that have that "spark" and which are special. I'd venture to say that few photographers become true artists. The artists are the experts who have mastered the technique -- it is second nature -- and know their subject matter so well that their best image blow your socks off. They know their subjects, the environment, and their gear, and are able to produce mind-blowing images that say something about their subject or that moment in time.
 |
| Blue shark on a longline, off Baja Mexico. The fishing of sharks, often only for their fins, can be incredibly wasteful. Divers now rarely see blue sharks off the California coast, almost certainly due to overfishing of sharks. |
Back to the story -- this was written in 1988 or so. Those were the days of the Nikonos V camera, 36 shots per roll of film, plenty of sharks off San Diego, Kodachrome 64 film, "rush processing of film". Some things never change. As far as I can tell, BCs haven't really changed in 30 years.
The image from that shoot was published a bunch of times. Here are a couple of covers.
Swimming with
Sharks
Photographing Sharks for a
Medical Advertisement
When Ellen Walton at the Frank J. Corbett agency called me, I
thought that this would be just another standard stock sale. She had
learned of my work in marine wildlife photography through
word-of-mouth after scouring through the submissions of several stock
agencies which specialized in natural history material. Walton,
however, was looking for a very specific type of photograph, and none
of the submissions from the agencies quite fit the bill. She
mentioned that she had to paid hundreds of dollars in research fees
without finding a shot that would work. This was not surprising to
me, considering her description of the desired image. Her agency
wanted to use a shot of a photographer with a menacing, large shark,
to serve as the centerpiece of an advertising campaign for OptiRay, a
medical solution used in cardiac imaging technology. The slogan for
the campaign was "There's Always a Safer Way to Get a Great
Picture."
Ms. Walton requested stock images that might fit her criteria. I
sent her a selection of my stock photographs of sharks and divers
along with a note letting her know that I had the resources available
to conduct a shoot specifically for this job. Living in San Diego, I
had made the acquaintance of a group of divers who regularly took
tourists out to see and photograph open-ocean blue sharks, a
relatively common predator, and one of the few species which has been
documented to attack man. Blue sharks are fairly predictable
animals, and although they are certainly dangerous, they don't get
quite large enough to crush a man in their jaws, and their teeth,
although razor sharp, are short and stubby. In contrast, a mako
shark has long, slender teeth. Mako sharks are not as common as blue
sharks, and they are much harder to photograph than blue sharks. The
difference in their teeth structure is crucial. Jeremiah Sullivan, a
diver and photographer in San Diego, developed a working shark suit
in the 1970’s, specifically to protect against attacks by blue
sharks. Only four or five of these suits were ever made, with a cost
of $6000 each. The suits are made of stainless steel links woven
together electronically into a tight mesh. The mesh covers the
diver's entire body and allows enough flexiblity to swim and move
around in. The stainless steel mesh works by spreading the point of
impact of a shark's tooth into a more generalized area. I've been
bitten several times since first trying on the suit, and it really
works! Even a large eight-foot shark can bite my arm with no blood
or bruises afterward. A mako shark's teeth, in contrast with the
blue shark's, would probably tear right through the steel mesh. No
one has ever been attacked by a mako shark while wearing one of these
suits, and this is where good judgment and experience in filming
large animals comes into play.
The real danger of photographing sharks in this steel suit comes
with its weight and restrictiveness. To find blue sharks, Bob
Cranston, the captain of the boat that leads these popular
excursions, pilots his boat twenty miles out into the open ocean.
The bottom here is over two miles down, and a novice diver might
easily become disoriented by the endless, bottomless,
three-dimensional blue space all around him. Diving in the open
ocean can be disorienting due to the three-dimensionality of the
water. It is easy to go down very deep, very fast, without realizing
it until it is too late. There are no visual clues to indicate where
or how fast a diver might be sinking. The neoprene of a wetsuit
compresses at depth, making a diver even heavier relative to the
water around him, and so the deeper a diver sinks, the faster he may
go. This is an exceedingly dangerous situation. Only experienced
divers attempt blue-water diving in the open ocean. When Bob
Cranston leads groups of tourist divers out on his trips, he always
personally escorts them from the boat to the shark cage during a
practice dive and during the actual shark dives to make sure that his
clients do not fall victim to this disorientation. Add the weight
and relative inflexibility of a shark suit to the inherent problems
of blue-water diving, and small problems can quickly become dangerous
situations. Divers use a piece of equipment to adjust their buoyancy
in the water, which effectively acts as a parachute to keep them from
sinking down too fast. This is called a buoyancy compensating device
(BCD), and it is an adjustable volume air bag into which air is
pumped to keep the diver neutrally buoyant. The shark suit itself
weighs a good 20 pounds. However, the BCD is easily punctured by
frenzied sharks, and a diver could easily find himself sinking out of
control, down to the bottom two miles down, with a twenty pound,
$6000 stainless steel anchor, impossible to take off underwater.
This is the danger, and it is not a glorious prospect. We shark
divers have learned to pay constant attention to our surroundings,
our depth, and the location of our buddies. Ironically, as with most
things in the ocean, it is not the sharks, but rather a diver’s
carelessness that leads to dangerous situations.
Ellen Walton sent me a layout showing the type of image that she
wanted for the ad. The shark was very large and menacing in the
frame, with a mouth full of big, serrated teeth, and a photographer
in a shark cage, very small in the frame. The shark looked much like
the great white shark from
Jaws, one of the most fearsome and
awe-inspiring predators in the world. Unfortunately, white sharks
are simply not found easily. Avid divers regularly pay $10,000 and
upwards for the chance to see one of these animals. The money goes
toward a week on a boat along with vast amounts of chum consisting of
horsemeat, tuna, and assorted guts and blood of other animals. With
all this expense, there is still no guarantee of seeing a great white
shark. I would not be able to provide the great white shark for
Frank J. Corbett for the day rate that we had agreed upon. One of the
reasons I had landed the job was that my estimation of day rate, boat
rental, shark cage and shark suit rental, bait, and other expenses
was less than what the agency would have had to pay to combine two
photographs of a shark and photographer in a Scitex computer . I
made all of this clear to Ms. Walton before proceeding. Bob Cranston
had his method for attracting blue sharks down cold; by hiring his
boat, I was virtually guaranteed to be able to photograph blue sharks
close enough to get the composition that I wanted. The biggest
problem was that blue sharks hide their teeth until they feed! Like
the creatures from the movie
Alien, blue sharks have jaws that
actually protrude out when the shark is biting. Until the moment of
impact, however, the teeth and jaws are recessed. To get the
composition that Frank J. Corbett wanted, I would have to be within
inches of the shark.
The actual taking of the photograph was simple compared to the
vast amount of work involved in getting to the open ocean site twenty
miles offshore, unloading the shark cage, putting out a sea anchor
(which keeps the boat from drifting away while you are chasing a
shark around), and chumming the water with bait to attract the
sharks. Bob Cranston, as my model and chief shark handler, was in
charge of baiting the sharks into range and keeping an eye on my
back. Another diver was in the shark cage, serving as a model and
keeping an eye on Bob and me. Yet another person stayed on the boat
at all times to keep watch for changing weather, keep the chum line
going, fill tanks, and help us out of our suits.
For equipment, I chose a Nikonos V amphibious camera with an
Ikelite Substrobe 150 flash. The Substrobe 150 is a large, powerful
strobe with a very wide angle of coverage, more than enough to cover
the 15mm wide-angle lens that I chose. To make the shark appear as
large and threatening as possible, I knew that the shark's face
needed to be as close to the lens as possible. The 15mm Nikonos lens
is an exceedingly sharp lens specifically designed for use
underwater. To make the shark appear large in relation to the diver,
I tried to shoot only when Bob was a few feet behind the shark. The
Nikonos is a 35mm camera system, and so I stayed with very fine-grain
films, using both Fujichrome 50 and Kodachrome 64. Kodachrome 64 is
my preferred film in such situations. Its high contrast works well
in the diffuse light underwater, rendering subjects sharp and crisp.
Fujichrome 50 is a better choice in greenish water, as color balance
makes greenish water appear bluer and more appealing. The agency had
planned to use the photograph in a number of sizes, one blown up to
poster size for a tradeshow, and one as a full-page size ad in a
number of medical magazines.
Although we were shooting in sunny California, light underwater is
always at least two stops below light levels on the surface. Twenty
miles offshore in the summer, fog usually prevails, and the day of
the shoot was no exception. Light levels underwater were low, and so
the higher speed of Kodachrome 64 was a help. To show the shark and
diver in a background of blue water, it was necessary to use strobe
light as fill, adjusting the strobe output to match or just barely
fill in the colors and details of the subjects, while relying on
ambient light to provide primary exposure. To provide the agency
with a variety of lighting situations to choose from, I varied my
strobe fills and primary exposures over a wide range of exposures.
Over the course of the day, I shot about 300 exposures, or 8 rolls of
film. Each roll of film was exhausting and time-consuming. To
change film, I had to swim back to the boat, haul myself and 100
pounds of gear onto the boat, rinse the camera and strobe off with
fresh water, and change the film. While shooting, Bob and I would
swim with a shark, attempt to photogrpah a large, fast-moving shark
in a natural position, with Bob attempting to both attract the shark
to us, point it toward my direction, and then hold a pose as a
photographer. After shooting a few exposures, we would both have to
swim back over to the shark cage, which had been dragged by the wind
and boat for twenty to thirty yards. Swimming in the shark suits
while carrying large and bulky photographic gear was exhausting, and
so we would have to hang onto the cage for a few minutes to rest and
catch our breath. Working hard underwater causes you to breathe hard
and forcefully, and many divers are familiar with how difficult it is
to get enough oxygen into our lungs to feel rested again. Our air
tanks were thus rapidly depleted, and changing tanks took yet another
difficult swim back to the boat and a change of gear.
Ellen Walton wanted to see the film immediately, and so the
Fujichrome film was processed the and shipped via overnight courier
the next day. The Kodachrome took a day longer, and the agency ended
up using a dark, moody shot of a diver and shark. Out of those 300
exposures, only one or two shots fit the bill exactly, so I felt
lucky. But what is luck? I believe that you make your own luck, by
shooting different compositions, exposures, and hedging your bets.
a. Choose the original folder, right click and choose "Get Info," click on the lock at the bottom right of the Get Info window (enter your admin password), then choose "Read & Write" for everyone and all other users under Sharing and Permissions. Then click on the tool wheel at the bottom and choose " apply to enclosed
items" in the folder. This might take a long time as all files in the folder will be revised to allow all users to read and write to it. 
