The Underwater Podcast
The Underwater Podcast
The Challenges of Shooting Underwater Polaroids with Erick Regnard
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In episode #61 host Brett Stanley chats with surf and underwater photographer Erick Regnard
Erick, along with his brother Ian, created an underwater housing for a 5x4 large format polaroid camera 20 years ago, and shot some incredible photographs with it in Tahiti.
We talk about how they built the camera and housing, the technical issues they had to overcome, and what it’s like to shoot 1 frame an hour for 3 weeks.
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Episode Summary
In this episode of the underwater podcast, the host Brett Stanley interviews surf and underwater photographer Eric Renard, who along with his brother Ian, built an underwater housing for a 4x5 large format Polaroid camera 20 years ago. They shot breathtaking images in Tahiti, overcoming technical challenges, and capturing photos at a rate of one per hour for three weeks. Eric discusses the intricacies of their custom-built camera housing, the pros and cons of using a flat port versus a dome port, their meticulous pre-shot preparations, and the emotional and physical demands of the project. They also touch on the philosophical aspects of photography, the transition from film to digital, and the joy of tackling complex projects. Eric shares insights on their other photographic endeavors, the limitations and occasional frustrations of working with film, and the unique satisfaction derived from creating art the hard way, free from the shortcuts offered by digital technology.
Welcome to the Underwater Podcast, where we take a deep dive into the world of underwater portrait photography, cinematography and everything in between with your host, Brett Stanley Stanley. Welcome back to the Underwater Podcast, and this week I'm chatting with surf and underwater photographer Eric Renard. Eric, along with his brother, Ian, created an underwater housing for a 4x5 large format Polaroid camera 20 years ago and shot some incredible photographs with it in Tahiti. We talk about how they built the camera and housing, the technical issues they had to overcome and what it's like to shoot one frame an hour for three weeks. All right, let's dive in. Eric, welcome to the Underwater Podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. So I've got to tell you that I've seen your underwater Polaroids for years now, and even friends of mine have talked about these images, and we never really knew who created them or who made this underwater Polaroid case. So I've kind of been tracking you down for the last few years, so I'm glad to finally actually have you on the show.
Speaker 2Well, great to be here. It's funny. I saw a couple of. There was some talk online and some people were trying to do stuff with 4x5 underwater and my name popped up in the chat, which was kind of good because they were talking about there was a guy who was shooting in, I think, in the river somewhere. You know where they got the manatees.
Speaker 1Oh, in the Florida Springs.
Speaker 2Yeah, somewhere around there and there was one guy who had a model and they were kind of. You know, sometimes the banter is not that positive and some people was criticizing it and some other the purist was complaining that some of the stuff is not that sharp. But I think that photography these days something can be blurry and can be brings you emotion.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, I think that's what it's all about. I always say to people as long as there's something, you see something and it gives you some emotion, then you know, get it to put on your wall if you want. You know. Yes, so yeah, it's triggering something inside of you.
Speaker 1No, no, exactly. I think I've always kind of said this is out of focus and blurry photos are your style, then go for it. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Speaker 2I saw this exhibition in Paris, remember, when there was a bit of a transition between film and digital, there was this photographer that went and did a mission with throwaway cameras, so it was a little bit of the trend at that time. There was all these little throwaway cameras, you know the one that I'm talking about?
Speaker 1Yeah, the little like Kodak disposable cameras.
Speaker 2Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So he did an exhibition. I saw that in Paris. Most of them was self-focused, but the content or what was in there was amazing. He sold out, yeah, and it's a time that really made me think about lots of different things. And then you had the digital that came through and although I'm a little bit, I love film and I love holding film, etc. I think the creation of digital has helped a lot of kids who was not good at, you know, getting the exposure right, create something, and it has really shaken the world of photography and have a lot of new ideas coming through. Oh, no, absolutely. So I think that was the best thing about digital For me. I still can't get around in my head of all my photos stored in a box, right, you know, as a hard drive, and I'd rather go through a file and seeing my, my negative, but that's being a little bit, maybe, old style. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, the funny thing is I still scan them and have them in that box, right?
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 2I mean you have to right yeah, it's just for the ease of use and everything.
Speaker 2Well, to be able to promote yourself, everything is online these days, everything's digital, so you need to transfer your photography to digital.
Speaker 2Yeah Well, it's interesting you talk about the transition from film to digital, because that's probably similar to what know if you know that film or if your audience know that film. So PN55 is a four by five Polaroid rated at 50 ASA, so it was probably one of the sharpest films out there at the time and it's got a really cool border around it. And there was a little portrait photo about the 5x7 or something and it was on his wall, shot by a photographer, and I went, oh wow, what's this? What type of film that was? And he said, oh, it's a Polaroid 4.5. And the Polaroid 4.5 comes with a negative and a positive, and you got to overexpose the positive, which is a paper that we all get as a Polaroid, but it also had a negative to it and so the negative needed to be exposed at 40 ASA. So it's a bit of a slow film and I thought, cool, maybe we should start doing some portrait with it. And I went and bought a 4x5 camera and just started experimenting with the film.
Speaker 1Yeah, and so with that camera you went and bought, is that just any camera? And then the back goes on the back of it.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's a Lenov Master Technica Right.
Speaker 1Yeah, so a normal 4x5 camera. Does that have bellows as well?
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, so a normal 4.5 camera Does that have bellows as well? Yeah, most of them got bellows, I think. Is there any 4.5 that doesn't have bellows?
Speaker 2I think I'd seen some pictures of the camera underwater, and I think I didn't see any with the bellows, yeah yeah, yeah, there's a lot of, I wouldn't say, ingenuity, but we broke our head for a year to try to figure out how we were going to make it work underwater. Yeah, so let's to be a diving instructor Sorry, an assistant diving instructor. And I, every now and then I popped in the diving shop, where you know, I got my course and all that, yeah, and one of the instructors said to me oh, eric, you should go to this place. It's near Tonga and the visibility is like 60 meters and which is what times three, so about 180 feet, and the whales come really close to you. There's massive whales. You can swim quite close to the whales. And I went.
Speaker 2Oh well, I'm not really a nature photographer. I don't go out and shoot wildlife. I've always been a person, a people person shooter and don't get me wrong, I love scenery. I take some photos of scenery, but I don't go out set off to go. Oh, I'm going to go out to Alaska and take some photos of scenery, but I don't go out set off to go. Oh, I'm gonna go out to alaska and take some scenery shots.
Speaker 2So I went. Okay, that could be cool, but not really my thing. Yeah, yeah, but I went back and talked to him and so, for everybody who doesn't know, I got a twin brother and we both work together, we're both photographers. So I talked to him about it and I said, well, it'd be cool to probably have somebody in there. And we thought, well, why don't we have a naked girl? Hasn't been done before, and you know big animal, why don't we shoot it with a four-five? And we went all right, yeah, no problem. I think we were a little bit naive of what we were saying, right, and when we started developing the idea, we realized that it wasn't going to be that easy. But it was for me, something that's not easy is a bit challenging, right, it's easy when I do it.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we went on. It took us about a year to try to figure out how to get a camera to work underwater, and so, with the help of an engineer from a camera shop, we tried different things and we ended up realizing that the only way it would work. I'm not sure your audience are very much a lot of underwater people, right.
Speaker 2In general, yeah, just underwater yeah, so most people will shoot underwater with a dome port and some of them will have a flat port. Dome port will go probably with a wide angle and then a flatter port with a lens. Yeah, but the problem whether it's a dome port or a flat port is that the distance between your lens and the front of the port if the when that varies, that create a magnifying effect.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2All right. So as a diving photographer, there would be no problem. You have an autofocus camera, so you just go out and you'll autofocus, but if your focus needs to be fixed then you need to know exactly where to put the the focus. Yeah, and so we set out, realizing that, we call, we couldn't deal with a dome port. It had to be a flat port. And then we realized that the lens could not be moved right. And then we thought, well, how do we focus?
Speaker 1because with the bellows you move the bellows back and forth, which moves the front of the yes, yeah, lens.
Speaker 2Basically right but then we realized that the cool thing mean what is focus? Really, focus is moving where the image, the plane, where it's focused, to where the film is, basically, so that plane could be behind the film or in front of the film.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2You're just moving it to that where your film is right. So we decided just to. And the great thing with the four five is that you can move the back instead of the front oh yeah, right, so you fix the front of the bellows.
Speaker 2So we we took the bellows out, right, we made that fixed and we just used the back bellows to focus, oh, okay. So then we had a fix. We had a lens that could not. We made it came to as close as possible to the flat port and we just moved the bellows at the back to vary our distance. Oh right, okay. So that was one chart or one hurdle over. And then we knew that to try to go underwater and focus would be just too hard, so we had to pre-focus things, right, yeah. And the way we made sure that everything was focused is that we did some tests before making sure, let's say, that at three meters I was able to get some type of images underwater. I was able to get some type of images underwater. And then what was happening is that I was or basically the model was, going out with a measuring tape. That I was really. I had the measuring tape with me on my weight belt.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And then so she would take that out to three meters, and then I would really back in.
Speaker 1Oh, okay.
Speaker 2Yeah, and then I would try to keep that distant constant when we were going down together.
Speaker 1Right. And so what sort of aperture are you at Cause? Only five, six Right, but even in a medium format that's quite not a lot of that's like f4 or even less. Yeah, yeah, yeah so not a lot of room error no, not a lot of room.
Speaker 2Yeah, and it had to be that because we we lost the stop going underwater. We were only shooting at very shallow depth, so it was between you, um five and one meter Right Of the surface, so, but we were still I still overexposed for to have a little bit of it was it's always a little bit overexposure in black and white, it's kind of good you can get that back instead of having the opposite If it's too dark. And then the film was at 40 asa and then I had, so I was shooting about six years, six years of a second underwater oh, okay yeah, yeah, so fairly slow yeah yeah, so then.
Speaker 1So I mean, what was the reason behind not going with the dome port? Would that just make things more complicated?
Speaker 2Yeah, the dome port, will you know, because it's not flat. Your lens will not be flat against the window or the port itself.
Customized Dome Ports and Polaroid Housings
Speaker 2Then you know it's got a reversal effect, the dome port, because if you go you shot with the dome port before on a fix on manual focus. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know how you probably need to put it at very close, how you probably need to put it at very close, but then when you for us I think the Dome port was more created more problems. You know that we didn't want to go. Okay, if we have a Dome port First, it would have been very expensive to find a Dome. It would have been very expensive to find a dome port that would have the angle of. It was a 90mm lens that we were using, but still it's seen quite a bit. So it had to. It's a bigger lens, etc. So to find whoever would be making and I don't think it was impossible, but it would have created a lot more problems.
Speaker 1Yeah, so just by using the flat port you kind of reduced the amount of problems you had. Yeah, I mean, it'd be interesting.
Speaker 2It'd be interesting these days to go okay, why don't we try a DOM port to this? Yeah, and see what difference to test it with one flat port and one dome port.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think the main difference would be, you know, because if you're on a 90mm lens to start with, then you're basically going to magnify that by 20% with the flat port. So yeah, with a dome port you're going to get that 90 back again, so you get a wider frame. But yeah, I mean that's interesting. So, yeah, you went for the flat port and then, so how did you build the actual housing itself?
Speaker 2So the Polaroid back. So with the PN55, you slide the sheet film in and then, once it was in the bottom, there's a metal bottom there and it kind of locked inside the holder and then you had to pull. It was like a curtain, a little bit like just a normal sheet holder, but the curtain is made out of paper, right, all right. So, and inside the curtain on the top, you got the chemicals yeah, plus you got the negative yeah, I think.
Speaker 1Right yeah.
Speaker 2Plus, you got the negative. Yeah, I think Right. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. No, I think the negative is in and you have the positive inside, right?
Speaker 1Is PN. Is this film? Is it similar to like other Polaroid film, where it is basically all sandwiched together with the chemicals inside it?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's like that, but PN got a negative and a positive.
Speaker 1Gotcha Okay, so you would end up pulling it apart. One side would be negative and one side would be positive.
Speaker 2Yes, okay.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So the good thing, you wash the negative in sodium sulfide Right, okay, yeah. And the good thing, you wash the negative in sodium sulfide Right, okay, and you clear the chemicals from it and then you hang it up to dry, oh, okay, and you got a pretty sharp four by five negative Right From your Polaroid. But the sad thing is that you got to overexpose the positive to get a properly exposed negative. So you kind of lose having a Polaroid.
Speaker 1Gotcha, yeah, so you can't expose it perfectly. For both of them You've got to rule one for the other. Yes, yeah, exactly so, and would you be? You'd be aiming for the negative, obviously.
Speaker 2So you can, yes, print from it and and I think people use a pn because of the cool border and the negative effect also. So with the positive you didn't get that border, gotcha okay. You know, it was just a like a normal Polaroid positive. It's just a negative that had that border. It was basically a way to attach the system together.
Speaker 1And then it ended up going.
Speaker 2Wow, everybody went, in fact, I love the border.
Speaker 1It's interesting how people pick up on different things and kind of run with it yeah.
Speaker 2So I don't think when they made it, it was in 10 intentionally that the border would be the cool thing, right? Yeah, yeah, I think people photographers, picked it up and go yeah, great concept, but I love the border yeah, no, exactly yeah, so that would.
Speaker 1How did that kind of cause you design issues in terms of having to get that Polaroid out of there?
Speaker 2Yeah, so we asked the. So we went to a guy that made housing custom made housing and we asked him to make sure that the housing was wide on the right-hand side, so when you kept that carton or paper that you would pull out, you would keep it straight on the side. Unfortunately, he didn't follow the instruction that well and made it shorter, oh no, so we were just able to curl it around without really bending it Right, which was very lucky. Otherwise it would have had to break it and make an extension. So we ran with it like that. Yeah right.
Speaker 1And so when you look at the back of the camera, is it twice the size of the polaroid sheet, because you have a container for the film on the side yeah, no, just it was.
Speaker 2So I mean, normally this guy makes his housing a little bit bigger. It's a little bit low, uh, there's a bit more air around the camera. It's not a really tightly fit housing to cameras that he normally makes. Yeah, and this one had to have some levers et cetera. So we would put the camera in and then pull the lever to release the camera from the bracket and then also have some space for the Polaroid on the side, plus have a manual system to release the trigger to press the trigger Right yeah the trigger so it was a little bit wider.
Speaker 2It wasn't double the size of the camera, but I'd say it was one and a half kind of.
Speaker 1Right, yeah, off to one side. So then he's made this thing bigger, which now has more air inside it.
Speaker 2Yeah, 15 kilos, which is how many pounds is that?
Speaker 1Oh, it's like 35 pounds. Yeah, yeah, yeah so how would you attach that? Would you just wrap a weight belt around it, or something, yeah.
Speaker 2So I mean, yeah, we had, we could have made an anchor point, and we actually did put a system around it to put the weights attached to it, but the big problem was then lifting it out of the water to pass the camera to Ian. So we thought it's better if we have just a weight belt, and so there was a hook by the side of the Zodiac where I take the weight belt out and put it on the hook and then pass the housing to Ian Right, who was in the boat to process each shot.
Speaker 1And did that 15 kilos? Did that sort of make it pretty neutrally buoyant under the water? It?
Speaker 2made it a little bit negatively buoyant so I could leave the camera on the floor bed Right. Yeah, I didn't want it to be too. I mean, the problem would have been hard right, Depending what depth you're going. And then I didn't want at some stage, if I had to let it go, that it would just float back to the surface.
Speaker 1Right, yeah, and so what sort of depth were you in? I think you said like one, so.
Speaker 2Tahiti was standing depth. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, and it's a place, it's a sand bank where the stingrays get fed, right. So the best thing with that is that she was after each shot she could stand and really relax and take a breath. Otherwise she would have been kicking and get more tired, so it would have been a little bit harder.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely so. How long did it take you to do each shot? I assume you could only do one photo at a time.
Capturing Underwater Polaroid Photography
Speaker 2So I would go down with her. So first, to be able for her to stay down, she had to exhale some of the air inside. She can't just go and take a deep breath because she'll just float back up. So she had to exhale some of the air in her lungs and so she could only stay about 15 seconds. So she'll go down, get the position, and sometimes the stingray wasn't there and then, or sometimes the position was not right and when she came back I wasn't wearing any scuba, so I needed to. Well, yeah, because first I could last a lot longer than her, because I could hold my breath a deeper, a deeper hold than her, and then I needed to converse with her to give her feedback, you know. So as soon as she came back up, I'll come back up and then talk to her and then, when she's okay, we'll just go back down and do that until her position was right. And then there was a stingray there and then, if that came together nicely, I'll take a photo. Then I'll swing back to the boat, pass, take the white belt, pass that to Ian. Ian would open the housing, take the camera out, put the carton back in, process the Polaroid, wait for it for you know it was 90 seconds or a minute and then open it up, have a look at the positive and then give me some feedback on it and then put another, put the neg in where I built tanks of water, put the negs in there and then put a new Polaroid in, put the camera, cock the lens, put the camera back in the housing and then pass it back to me I put the weights around it and go back to the next shot. So we were averaging about a shot every hour. Wow, yeah, because between her doing the position and getting it right and having stingrays, it took some time.
Speaker 2Yeah, and our idea was to shoot one position a day, just in case, if we had a great shot, could we get a better one with that position? Right, because we didn't know right. Could there be another magical, a better one with that position? Right, because we didn't know right, could there be another magical, a better magical moment happening? So we thought we'll concentrate on one position a day and we had all these positions before we came to Tahiti.
Speaker 2Yeah, and Tahiti, I have to say, because probably people are going to ask we talked about this place before and the place. The island before I was told was Niue, with the whales Niue, but Niue N-I-U-E and it's an island off the coast of Tonga Right. But we were a little bit skeptical to go there because we never shot whales. It was in the open ocean and we've never been there. So we thought why don't we go to Tahiti and test the housing and to making sure that it works In a lagoon? It's shallow, it's quite, you know, it's quite. It's a lot easier to deal with and and I flew a model from hawaii that I shot before- yeah and so that's why we're in, uh, in tahiti, testing the camera.
Speaker 2Yeah, and so, for for a day, we were shooting one position and we had three weeks in tahiti, and we were shooting one position and we had three weeks in tidy and we were shooting about eight hours a day, which is what about eight, eight shots a day about, yeah, averaging about eight shots a day. Well, but after three weeks we were totally emotionally and physically exhausted. The water was not warm anymore and she was kind of over it.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So it did drain it a little bit out of us, but we got some great shots. So I don't know if your audience are seeing or will be seeing the stingray photos, but that was a test shoot, yeah, which came actually probably more incredible than the shoot with the whales.
Speaker 1And so when you were doing that, did you know before you went to Tahiti how long it was going?
Speaker 2to take to do each shot. No, we knew that. We didn't know how long it would take to get you know to to take one shot and how long it would take to get the next shot. You know, yeah, yeah. But we had a series of position and we said, okay, we gotta do only one position a day because if we think that we've got something right and then move on, then maybe later that could not be right. And I think that we've got something right and then move on, then maybe later that could not be right. And I think that was probably the best thing, because the biggest problem well, there was more problems than things as we were discovering it. So in Tahiti I couldn't get sodium sulfide and you can't travel with that. In Hawaii, when I go there or some other place, I can go to the university or go to a chemist. You can't really get it over the chemist, but the university, with some credibility, they can trust you and give you sodium sulfide.
Speaker 1Okay. So what is sodium sulfide? What's it used for? Okay, so what is sodium sulfide? What's it used for?
Speaker 2It's a chemical and can be used for different things, but you can't travel with it, right, yeah, so in Tahiti with the PN55, you can wash the negative also in just water, right, and the sodium sulfide helped washing the chemicals of the neg but also act as a hardener.
Speaker 1Right as a fixer.
Speaker 2Sorry, yeah so, but it was recommended so that you could later on have your neg in the fixer after Right.
Speaker 1You know they could do that, so yeah.
Speaker 2So we put them in those little tanks that you get for four, fives. And what we discovered on the first day when we came back, that probably 20% between 15% and 20% of the necks was clear as a window, as a glass. All the emulsion has flown back into the water.
Speaker 1Oh God.
Speaker 2And we don't know why that was happening. There was two things oh God, salt air right, and we thought that if we tried to dry it on the boat, we would end up having destroyed negative later on eaten by salt, right, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2So you know you're on sea level. There's plenty of salt getting evaporated around you. It it's bound to go on the egg. So we decided to keep it wet and then dry it after a day when we come back home, and the first day we discovered that. So we didn't know if it was because the water got warmer, but it wasn't all the eggs, and we didn't know if it was due to some of the net being the one done at the beginning and it passed a certain time. We were just hoping that the rest, that whatever we were shooting, could stay on the neg by the time we got home.
Speaker 1And you're just talking about each day, right, like not the end of the trip, just every day, every day. So you've got eight negatives, yeah, so about two negative would be out.
Speaker 2Oh God, yeah, yeah, so you could be unlucky and I don't know what we've lost. I don't know because Ian was looking at it quickly. Because Ian was looking at it quickly and that's why I said it was great that we were able to keep on doing the same position, so that imagine if we moved on to the next position within a day, we could have probably lost one of those positions.
Speaker 1Oh, no, totally.
Speaker 2And a lot of it was experimenting, because some of the position wasn't working so we moved on to the next. It's like shooting a model on land. Sometimes the idea that you have doesn't work and you just got to go with the flow and adjust it and move it or do something different.
Speaker 1Yeah, no, totally. And so this, this whole process, is about as far away as from digital photography as you can get. Yeah, this is like that isn't. Did you enjoy that process of? Oh yeah, the slowness of it?
Speaker 2yeah, I think I I said to people the the great thing it was. I think I wouldn't say the problem of digital these days, but it's more like things are traveling at such a speed these days, everything's changing rapidly and it was kind of cool and great to be able to take your time to do things. Yeah, cool and great to be able to take your time to do things. Yeah, you know, I mean with with digital. I mean they they're getting cameras now that that everything, once you shoot it, it's gonna go straight on the net or on the cloud or somewhere that. So all this is about speed and time and and this was just slowing everything down to the, to the core of things you know the basic.
Speaker 1Yeah, there's digital cameras these days where you can. It'll basically taking a video and then you just choose which frame you want to take out of that video, whereas you had to actually sit there underwater and think, oh, is this the shot or is the? Next one gonna be the shot, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, before you even click the shutter, I had a moment.
Speaker 2I don't know if you can recall, there's a shot where she's in crouching and there's two stingrays um on top of that of yeah, yeah, all right. So those stingrays came from opposite direction. It's not like they were floating on top of each other and they just came on top of her. They came from left to right, both of them, and they came on top of her and turned towards me. That's incredible. So at what time do you go now? Yeah, right, because you only got one shot, so it is. Is it now? Is it now? Is it now Is?
Speaker 1it now.
Speaker 2Am I going to get something better after, or would I miss it? Yeah, you know. So there was some of that happening.
Speaker 1And the beauty about that shot is that there is not just that the stingrays are in the perfect position, but there is a small fish in the foreground of that that if it was like half a centimeter more to the right, it would totally cover her face. Yeah, I know. Like the timing of her face. It's kind of cute, yeah but it's, it's a different.
Speaker 1It's not there, it's slightly off of her, but you, it feels like the fish is kissing her yeah and so, and so, when you're actually shooting, when you're using the camera I mean, you've got a viewfinder, obviously, so you're just.
Speaker 2No, because it's a wide angle. We put a little viewfinder from a Nikonos on top of it, right, yeah, from a 15mm Nikonos on it, because it's a glass viewfinder that's on top of it so I could see. And in there it's kind of cool because it's got little frames so I could see where the camera was pointing a little bit and you get used to it, but it gave me a little bit of an idea.
Speaker 1And that's just sitting on top of the housing, of the housing, yeah, in the water, yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a waterproof.
Speaker 2You know what's a Nikonas, right? Yeah, the old 35 mil underwater cameras, yeah, yeah. Invented by Kuster and Jacques Maillot? Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1So had you done any underwater photos in other ways before this?
Speaker 2Well, I come from Mauritius, so I was a big fan of Cousteau when I was a kid so I was spending all my time in the water. Dad gave us a little weathermatic Minota so they used to take 110 film cartridge, yeah. So we started shooting with that camera and we just wanted to be Cousteau, right, yeah, later on, you know, we went to school, moved to Australia and that kind of died because the great thing in Mauritius you got a ton of coral and fish in front of you. In Australia you just got sand, yeah. So there was nothing much really to shoot here, so that kind of died down. And then I went and did uni and then when I went to work about a couple of years later, I decided to go and buy an Econos Right. And when we went back to Mauritius we did some photos and then we thought why don't we start shooting?
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And so I've always been attracted to the water. I wanted to make a career in underwater photography. To make a career in underwater photography, but in Australia. I think I would have had to move to Florida, oh, right, because in Australia you only had a couple of diving magazines at the time, right, but they wanted to pay $10 for a photo, right, yeah, they wanted to pay $10 for a photo, right, yeah. So I knew that I could not make a living out of taking photos underwater and selling it to the bank. I had to either work for a company, a brand, an underwater brand, you know, let's say, like Gotch Arm or any underwater you know.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, like a swimsy brand or wetsuits or well, yeah, a wetsuit company, a diving bottle company, etc. Yeah, yeah, and all of them are in florida, right? You know all the I would say the majority of them. So for us it was okay, well, what do we do? And then there was the surf happening. That we loved also. So we thought why don't we go and shoot surfing? So we transitioned from that into shooting surfing and for 15 years I was shooting surfing. I was traveling the world shooting surfing.
Speaker 2Mostly in the water or on the beach as well, mostly from the land because I had so many magazines I had to submit to. But I would go in the water when I could. Right, yeah.
Speaker 1And so when you're shooting like that, when you're shooting underwater with the Polaroid camera, I assume it's just natural light. How were you metering? How were you exposing?
Speaker 2Was it just Well? So I know my light and I know that I go under a meter underwater. I want to expose, overexpose it of one stone. So if I have F8 at 500 on top, I do you know, 5.6 at 500 or F8 at 250 underwater.
Speaker 1And you would have to set all those settings before you close the case up.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, yeah, all that stuff before.
Speaker 1Yeah, did you have any leaks? Did you have any?
Speaker 2We didn't. We tested it in the pool before, and without the camera, of course, but he makes his housing, he's, he does quite a lot of housing. So it's it's about making sure the o-rings were greased and there was not much sand around us, because other than the bottom of the ocean, but that doesn't tend to stick too much to your o-ring. But we were in the Zodiac so it was quite safe. But every day we were making sure there wasn't a hair or something. But the o-ring was quite soft and big so we were tightening that quite well.
Speaker 1Right, yeah, but do you still use the camera?
Speaker 2I still use a well, right, yeah, but do you still use the camera? I still use a 4.5. I haven't used the housing since I've got a photographer in Hawaii who wanted to bring it in the waves and test it out. I think you would have had to be a team of two or three people so you would have the housing with a rope with two or three people, because what happened is that if the wave takes it, it will. It could smash it. So if the person is at the right point, because there's so much air in it, you have the two other um swimmers at the back with a rope pulling on the or holding the housing, so it doesn't go with the wave. Right, that was the idea if you took that in the waves, but it hasn't been used since, right?
Speaker 1which is unfortunate, but yeah, I mean because it's such a beautiful format. I mean, I haven't seen photos like this before, shot underwater. Yeah, yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 2And for and for me it was. This was a great project. I mean, this is not just a great, it was an incredible project, and I always try to go okay, what's my next project, what do I do? I don't need to keep on doing the same thing over. So what happened, unfortunately, with this project? With the whales you probably go.
Speaker 2Where's the photo of the naked girl with the whales? When we went to Nui for two weeks, we didn't see one whale. Oh yeah, that's always the whales. When we went to Nui for two weeks, we didn't see one whale. Oh yeah, that's always the way. And so we got some photos of the girl and we thought why doesn't she practice her position so that when we see a whale, it's probably it might stay, it might go, we don't know, don't know. So if she knows exactly how to be in her position, then we'll cut that problem and we can get straight in it quite quickly and take a photo quite quickly, right?
Speaker 2So we practice and kept on shooting with a four five for me it was going also making sure I I get more used to it in the open water, yeah. And so we got some great shots also there, but nothing with the whale and some person asked that to me before. I said oh so are you going to go back and shoot it with the whales? I'm going, I kind of. Maybe won't, but I'm kind of going. You know what that was a project, that was what we've done. It's already an exhibition touring. If I go and do that again with the whales for me it's going to be am I going to do a kind of same same exhibition?
Speaker 1Yeah, does that undermine what you've already done?
Speaker 2I wouldn't think it would undermine, but I think I would get bored of it. Right To go back and say, oh, do I do the same position that I did Because these were quite good position? Yeah, I'll do them, but then they'll become boring for me because it's doing the same thing. So I kind of moving on to a different project.
Speaker 1So did you move on to anything else underwater?
Speaker 2Yes, but I'm shooting a girl underwater but I'm on top of the water, oh, okay, so above, shooting down through the surface, yes, shooting a girl underwater, but I'm on top of the water, oh, okay, yeah, so above shooting down through the surface. Yes, oh, cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2So trying to use the movement of the water to break the lines of a body, yeah, as a filter, basically Not as a filter, but you know, if you look at somebody from top of the water, if there's movement on the water, let's say a arm is not straight anymore. It's kind of broken. Yeah, so I'm trying to to have that happening right. And then I also want to shoot it early morning to get all the colors of the sunrise or the sunset, and so would this be in the ocean as well.
Speaker 2Well, the problem doing it in, let's say, a river, it tends to be a lot colder. I'm shooting it at the moment in the pools of Sydney.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2But I don't live in Sydney, so it's when I fly there, or it's got more complexity of elements. So you know, sometimes we go there and there's no sunrise, sometimes there's waves too many waves crashing in the pool, so there's things like this, and sometimes she can't perform at all. So I got to have I think I want to do it with different models to give it a little bit of different personality for some shots. So it's an idea. I've shot about probably five photos that I'm happy with, but I need another probably 10 or something, 10 or 15 to really be able to go okay, which one I like best.
Speaker 1Yeah, and is this something shot on film or is this a digital project?
Speaker 2That's shot on still on film on 5x7 Pentax.
Speaker 1Oh cool, yeah, and are you kind of drawn to projects that involve complexity?
Speaker 2Yes, I think so.
Speaker 1You like the problem solving?
Speaker 2Well, I think it doesn't need to be always problem solving as in technically, but I think I like it for it not to be easy. Okay, I think these days anybody can do anything, right. You can, I mean, recreate a photo if you want to, but it's for me. I remember when I was doing the 4.5 project, when we were trying to figure out how to make the camera go underwater, the owner of the shop which I nearly slapped him for it because he's a purist said to me Eric, why don't you shoot this in digital and just slap a border around it? Sacrilege, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I said uh, his name is ron, he's unfortunately deceased, and great man he's. Uh, he's come from germany and so he had all the thing with likers and hassleblads and all that stuff. But, yes, it would have been the easiest choice and I would have gone down and got a thousand or two thousand photos. Yeah, but anybody can do that as well.
Speaker 1Oh, no, exactly, yeah. And then where does it?
Speaker 2start. For me it doesn't add to. I guess I like the challenge and I like to go and do something that nobody can repeat, you know.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or you know, it's that kind of no one can kind of undermine what you did, because it's all there, it's all captured in camera, it's all practically done. There's no cheating. Yeah, yeah, and that's kind of my philosophy as well is, I do a lot of work, you know, I build practical sets and I build, you know all this stuff under the water.
Speaker 1And a lot of work. You know I build practical sets and I build, you know, all this stuff under the water and when I post them, people are like, oh, you know, you're really good at Photoshop. I'm like, oh God, no, that's not why, it's not how I did it and that's not why.
Speaker 2I did it.
Speaker 1And now with people you know they'll see work and they'll be, and they'll see how I did it. They'll see the behind the scenes or everyone they'll be like oh, you could have just done that with ai.
Speaker 2I'm like, oh, that's that problem yeah exactly yeah, it just keeps happening, yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, uh, you know, it's always it's easy to take the easy route, I think yes you know. So for me it adds to the rarity of the photo after. It adds to a lot of things. I mean those photos, those four or five photos are a limited edition of six. On the neg Right yeah. So we wanted them to be quite special and they printed two meters wide, which is how many feet? Is that Two times?
Speaker 1Yeah, times by three. So, yeah, six feet wide. Yeah, yeah, which must be amazing to see. Are they on display anywhere? There's one in my lounge. Right.
Speaker 2They're only so. There's been three buyers of them, but they're obviously at their house, but yeah, so they're for sale, and so people who buy them, I guess, put them. Nobody, no company, has bought them. I think some people are still quite careful about nudity, which is, I think, places like Europe. I haven't done an exhibition there with it. Yeah, and I will try to do something. It will be easier to have that in a foyer of a company, let's say, in Europe, than anywhere else.
Speaker 1I think you'll never be in a foyeryear in america, or it needs to be a few years here in australia to get there yeah, yeah, eric, that's awesome, such a such an interesting story like how you, how you did that and how you kind of yeah, the time you spent doing that so amazing.
Speaker 2Yeah, thanks for sharing it with everyone. Easy and and if anybody got any question, I'm here to answer.
Speaker 1They can email me and that's no problem. Yeah, great, I'll add that to the show notes when we publish it. And we also have a Facebook group if you want to join. People come in and they actually ask questions of the guests we've had as well.
Speaker 2Oh, yeah, cool. What's the Facebook group called?
Speaker 1It's just the Underwater Podcast group on Facebook. Yeah, I'll send you a link to it. Oh great, awesome, all right, well, thanks very much, eric. It's so great being able to chat with you about this.
Speaker 2Easy. I hope it all made sense. We were a little bit everywhere all over, but hopefully we come back and make sense to people. But I think everybody out there that just try different things, experiment it's really cool. Even if it doesn't work, who cares?
Speaker 1Oh, no, exactly yeah.
Speaker 2You won't know until you try.
Speaker 1Thanks for listening everyone and, as always, if you like the podcast, please subscribe, review and share. If you'd like to support with the production of these episodes, you can purchase our very cool merchandise at theunderwaterpodcastcom. We've got branded coffee mugs, stickers, beer cozies and posters featuring our amazing illustration and logo by Joe Hodano. If you'd like to connect with us or learn more about our guests, you can reach us at theunderwaterpodcastcom or on Instagram. We also have a Facebook group where you can discuss the episodes and even get your questions answered by our guests. There's a link to it in the show notes. Also, don't forget about Waterproof Magazine showcasing the best in underwater art. Read it online or purchase a print edition at waterproofmagorg. You can learn more about my underwater photography workshops and mentoring at brettstanleycom or brett s photo on instagram. The underwater podcast is presented and produced by me, brett stanley, and our music is neo by oh boy creating everyone. I'll see you in the water.