Underwater Modeling Adventures

Last weekend after diving, my dive guy, Stefan and I were discussing his upcoming project--a 24 hour underwater relay race called Telethon. He was looking for certified divers to complete their team but unfortunately as I leave tonight for the US and the race is in a few weeks, I couldn't help out. However, as we were going through the day's pictures--he started thinking about advertising for his race, and I was definitely more than willing to help out with that. His deal was this--free diving in exchange for some photoshoot "work" time. How could I say no to that?!

Stefan is the best, safest way to go if you're going to dive here!

http://www.plongee-wulfy-reunion.com/

In my experience, I've learned that for normal photoshoots, for every one usable/amazing shot, there are about 300 mediocre/unusable shots and maybe 100 horrible ones. You have to worry about thinking of interesting poses, the expression on your face, make-up and hair, flattering angles, the lighting, and the timing of the photograph. All of that is difficult enough. For underwater photoshoots---it is a whole other world. In addition to all of that, you AND the photographer are constantly moving back and forth with the currents. Then you have to get the animals to cooperate. Sometimes the animals are cooperating and you look stupid. Or your hair is all over the place. Or you look amazing but there are no animals in sight. Or everything is perfect for two seconds but you have to breathe, so then bubbles are everywhere and the photo is useless. So we'd try again and again and again and again for some photos until we got them right. Luckily for us, we communicate pretty well without being able to speak to each other...

Here are some of our photo fails:

lovely hair

and again...

unfortunate time to breathe

stupid face/bad lighting

sometimes fish jump out of their hiding places and scare the crap out of you

other times, the current takes you up to a school of fish too fast and you scare the crap out of them

This giant blowfish was a little too friendly...

others like to hog the camera

Also, trying to do pics with the flags was definitely a work out.

We had a great time doing it---a total of over 3 hours of underwater modeling--and in the end, we did have a couple great shots, and even a few seconds of film for the advertisement!