Jay (00:01.014)
Welcome to the dive table. I'm Jay Gardner and with me is Scott Bauer. He is back for our third and final episode together. And I'm excited about this one, Scott. How are you doing today?
Scott (00:13.418)
I'm doing good, how you doing?
Jay (00:15.534)
I'm good. I know that you in Texas are in a little bit of a heat wave. Maybe a little is not a good word. A big heat wave.
Scott (00:22.742)
Yeah, I think it's 105 right now. Not too bad. It's only a six o'clock. Yeah, it's six o'clock at night and it's 105 degrees.
Jay (00:26.786)
Ugh.
Jay (00:32.874)
Yeah, that's always I mean, I can I think I can legitimately say that I lived there for five years. So I went through, I think five summers straight. And I did look forward to some of the summers, which was weird. After the first one, I was like, Okay, summer means something. But then I think by the time it gets to like, you know, September, late September, early October, you're just like, I'm done. Like, when is it a breeze actually gonna happen?
So you're in it for the long haul. And I hear that Texas is breaking all kinds of records on when it comes to heat. That's pretty crazy.
Scott (01:01.099)
Yeah.
Scott (01:05.747)
It is.
We like to be by the water though, so it's usually not the biggest deal. I think, so we were on the river yesterday and I think it wasn't until maybe eight o'clock when I felt like I was no longer in danger of getting sunburned. That's basically what it's like right now. Cause it's at the points where it gets dark at nine o'clock and daybreak is probably what, seven, seven or eight? Maybe even earlier. But yeah, it's pretty intense.
Jay (01:34.458)
You don't know. You're not up before the sun.
Scott (01:36.69)
Yeah, I'm the wrong person to ask about that.
Jay (01:42.203)
Yeah, so this episode is sponsored by Sunbumb or Coppertone. Not really. They're not really sponsors to you listeners out there, but hey, if you want to be great. Yeah. No, I'm here in...
Scott (01:46.993)
Hi.
Scott (01:55.739)
No, it's not a real podcast until you're sponsored by Manscaped.
Jay (01:58.958)
That there you go, Manscaped. There you go. My goal is to get sponsored by NASA, which will never happen, but hey, why not? They should be sponsoring things. I think the US Postal Service is big on sponsoring podcasts. I don't know why, but yeah, I don't know why. It's whatever. I've heard a lot of podcasts that have a US Postal advertisement in them. So anyway, but hey, I'm excited you're here. And for this episode, we wanted to focus on
Scott (02:05.481)
Imply, yeah.
Scott (02:12.278)
Are they really?
Jay (02:27.79)
kind of expedition photography. And what do we mean by expedition? Expedition means you're planning on going out to somewhere maybe you're exploring, or maybe it's someplace that you haven't been, or maybe it's someplace you've been, but you're planning something specifically for photography. And so whether you're doing exploration or you're going someplace you haven't been and you're still doing photography, the idea behind planning for and executing that plan to capture the photos that you want.
or that you need for that expedition, I thought would be, we were talking about would be a really cool episode. So I'm excited to get into this one and hopefully cover some of the bases, talk about some of the expeditions you and I have done together, some of them we've done separately and try to kind of unpack this topic. So anything to add here, you're ready to jump in.
Scott (03:15.262)
No, no, I think that's great. I think the only thing I'd like to add is an interesting part about that is it doesn't even have to be a quote unquote expedition. You know, it's not like it's something that has to be sponsored or or, you know, paid for by grant. It could just be you're going on vacation. You have this idea in mind, you're going on this dive trip. And you know, you want to get a cool photo of your buddy or you in this cool place. And you know, you have this idea in mind of achieving
this photograph that you want to bring back with you and something you could print or share, you know, whatever it takes, whatever you want to bring back.
Jay (03:56.006)
Cool. Yeah, exactly. That's well said. Well said. Well, let's get into this one.
All right, Scott. So we're talking expedition photography, but before we get rolling too far, it's been a minute since we last talked. So you have some changes and some things that you've been doing. So do you want to share with the scuba verse out there? And I'm happy to share as well. It's my first episode back in a while. So I'll tell everyone what I've been up to. But go ahead. The mic is yours. What do you
Scott (04:25.154)
think, yeah, you're right. I think since we last spoke, I went to Rotan. Pretty amazing trip really loved it. And then after that I've been doing a lot of diving in the flower garden banks, which is off the coast of Texas. It's a really healthy coral reef. It's if you're familiar with Galveston, Texas is it's 100 miles south off the coast of Galveston right at the edge of the continental shelf, where you have a series of salt domes that
that push pretty close to the surface of the ocean. And on those salt domes, it's capped with a pretty legitimate coral reef. They say the coral cover is 50%, 50% coral cover in a lot of areas it's gonna feel like it's more than that. It's really healthy, really cool to see. To me personally, I enjoy going there almost more than a lot of places I've been to in the Caribbean. It's a lot healthier than a lot of places you'd see in more heavily trampled areas.
There's also another area, um, slightly closer to shore that you typically go to on these trips called Stetson bank has a lot less coral, but way more, way more animal encounters. It's a very cool place, very unique. And, um, yeah, it's, it's been a fun summer so far. I've had, had a lot of trips. Um, but yeah, that's, that's basically what I've been up to since, uh, since the last episode, podcast, whatever, whatever you call these.
Jay (05:48.97)
And you've moved as well, right? You, yeah, the episode, yeah, or, or show or whatever you want to say. Yeah. And you also moved. So, so you, you've suffered the moving.
Scott (05:52.778)
Yeah.
Scott (05:57.342)
Yeah, I did move. Yeah, I moved down the street. So yeah, no, I'm not, not that big of a deal. It's it was a pain. I don't ever want to move again, but, um, yeah, I'm trying to buy a house. So I moved to a place that's a little bit cheaper, save a little bit more money. Um, and the only thing that's demotivating me from buying a house is the idea of moving again.
Jay (06:00.398)
Down the street.
Jay (06:19.458)
Yeah, I know. I know I just went through it, but I moved halfway across the country quite literally. So I know that pain. I'm like, every day I'm like, this is this is my forever house.
Scott (06:30.314)
Yeah, that's a little bit rougher than what I went through because I'm only six minutes away from where I used to live. So I was moving one room at a time. Yeah, just one. Exactly. Yeah, it's the easiest way to do it. You don't have to live out of boxes for a few weeks afterwards. It's definitely the best way to do it.
Jay (06:35.022)
Yeah. And I see you have a rug. Does the rug tie the whole room together? You know, I see that rug, but it does. Yeah, there you go.
Jay (06:48.182)
Yeah, yeah, it's funny because I actually moved once when I was in just out of college with my roommate. We moved quite literally across the street. Like it was like, I think the address is 4052. And we moved to or that was the new address and the old one was like 4057. So it was literally across the street. I mean, literally, you could throw a stick or a stone across the street and you'd hit the new house.
And you thought like, Oh, this will be super easy. Like this is no big deal moving something like this. And actually I found it pretty difficult because it's not like you packed up boxes to do that and it's not like I had a whole bunch of stuff at that time anyways, but you just took like a thousand mini, mini trips and it was like, you know, that like death by paper cuts. Yeah.
Scott (07:33.546)
No, no, that's what happens. Yeah. The advantages, you're right, upfront is more work. The advantages in the long run, you don't have to do all the unpacking. So you don't have to live in that mess for months after you move.
Jay (07:44.65)
Yeah, that's a good point. You just take it into the room. It's done.
Yeah. And did your scuba stuff find a good closet or?
Scott (07:52.694)
There was a first thing to be moved. It has its own room now. It has its own bathroom. I have a stand up shower that's dedicated to wetsuits. And it's pretty cool. I get home, I just hang the wetsuit in the shower, turn the shower on, it gets a good rinse. Pretty good setup.
Jay (08:03.779)
Nice.
Jay (08:10.082)
Nice. And then your tanks and your regs have a nice pillow top bed and you know, you just lay them down.
Scott (08:15.19)
They're in the bathroom too, you know, it's like a huge double sink in there. So I have a lot of counter space and all the regs and everything. It's all, it's all nice and neatly organized. It's the strangest bathroom that anyone's probably ever seen.
Jay (08:27.674)
that I think you should post some Insta photos of that. I think everyone's gonna wanna see that. Like, here's my scuba bathroom. That's great.
Scott (08:30.71)
That's a good idea. I think it will actually. Yeah I'll post it on I'll post it on your page Yeah, I'll send it over later tonight
Jay (08:39.126)
Okay. Yeah. I want to see those photos. That'd be awesome. Yeah. And I'll, I'll give a quick update for me. Cause it's been a minute since I've been, um, on the show. Well, the show is, you know, episodes have come out. So yeah, I, we moved trying to get settled. You know, it's a big process. As you know, we've talked about before, but I actually got sick and I got really sick for a little bit and it triggered some other stuff, which we'll talk about later in different episodes.
but I was down and out for like three weeks straight and ended up in urgent care for a little bit and came back and finally I'm feeling, starting to feel better, which is great. And so we've taken a pause on the show, obviously, because it's not good to record from urgent care. So we took a pause from the show and unfortunately that means for my diving, it's been...
very limited all the way to my pool almost. I still have snuck in little pool sessions and things for myself, but it's been tough to kind of trust to get out on a boat, spend a day actually out diving and come back. And so I'm really looking forward to finally feeling better. Like I said today, I'm better than I was yesterday. Every day is getting better now, which is great. And then I've got a bunch of stuff coming up starting next week. So I gotta be fully ready to go, but we've got...
Actually four courses going back to back to back over the course of two weeks coming up next week, which is super exciting. So I think this episode will be published actually at the beginning of this. So July, I think it is 23rd. Yes, 23rd. We kick off UTD overhead protocols here in San Diego. So that's the precursor to CAVE and Rec.
penetration. It's kind of the line, no vis line, all those, those protocols that exist for the overhead environments, super exciting. And then right after that, we're doing an essentials of tech class. So we've got a bunch of students coming out for that, which is a awesome team oriented, it's kind of the, the personal skills plus team elements of team diving.
Right after that, we're doing an IDC, which we're hubbing out of my new house because we've got a pool and get the location for it, which should be a lot of fun. So we've got some instructor candidates coming out. Um, you're gonna have some new instructors with UTD, which is awesome. And then right after that, uh, I'm actually teaching a technical sidemount class. So we'll be doing a whole sidemount thing. So it's two weeks straight. And then in between that, we're doing a big party here at the house. So.
Anyone that's listening to this, if you would like to come, if you're local to Southern California or shoot, if you feel like getting on a plane, there are spots still open in these courses. So, if you want to join, reach out to me. But also the party will be July 31st here at my place. You are more than welcome to join us out there in the Scubaverse. And I think it's at seven o'clock here in San Diego. And we're going to just kind of hang out, have some good Mexican food.
and some wine and beer and other libations and sit around the fire pit and go night swimming and sit in the spa, whatever people want to do, but just a chance to hang out. So lots upcoming. So I'm getting healthier and we've been planning this stuff and I'm super excited for next week to come. So just to update from me as to why we've been off the air and how we're getting things stepped back up at this point.
Alright, so with that out of the way, people want to learn about expedition photography. What's that? Yeah, yeah, I know. I know I I'm, I'm really bad. I don't know about other people, how they handle it. I'm really bad. I, when I get sick like that, I go into like, uh, I don't recluse mode a little bit. Like I don't.
Scott (12:24.59)
Well, I didn't even know that you were sick like that. I had no idea.
Jay (12:45.41)
I don't really tell anyone that I'm sick or I shouldn't do that, but I do. Like I'm like, you know, people were like texting me like, Hey, what's going on? I'm like, Oh yeah, I'll be back in a couple of weeks. And I have to explain later when I'm like, I haven't got back to them a couple of days, like, sorry, man, I'm, I've been really sick. And then everyone has like, why don't you tell me? It was like, I'm sorry. I like, I just, I'm not open in that way for whatever reason. When I get sick, I have to get better about that. But anyway, so I've been kind of, you know,
Scott (13:06.388)
That makes sense, yeah.
Jay (13:12.358)
Producer Daniel is like, what is going on? And I had to tell him everything that's going on. And he, you know, cause he's, he's on top of things. And so yeah, I'm, I'm all right. It's a, it's a, I'll just say what it is. Like I have a thing that I was diagnosed with, gosh, my junior year of college. So I don't want to date myself, but it's been a while. It's been a while I've been living with this thing. It's a hereditary, it's just part of my genes that came up and.
Scott (13:34.353)
Hahaha
Jay (13:41.622)
out at that point. And it's called assertive colitis. So I promised myself from this, this I would start talking about it because I've never talked about it publicly, but it's assertive colitis, which essentially is an autoimmune disease that affects, you know, your digestive system. And it can be extremely painful and debilitating and all those sorts of things. And so yeah, you have to take maintenance medication for it.
Scott (13:45.736)
Oh yeah, yeah.
Jay (14:09.934)
And what happens for me is everyone has different triggers. So there's not like a single trigger, but it seems to me my triggers are either stress, which moving is part of it, but I don't think it was this, this time. Or it's when I get sick with something else, like a cold or something like that, which of course I have three young kids who go to school. Like it's just always, someone's always sick, you know? So this time I caught something and I got sick.
Scott (14:29.742)
You can only imagine, yeah.
Jay (14:35.894)
And then at the end of that, it was like a really bad cold. At the very end of that, because I'd been diving a lot and under the water and all that stuff, I got a little inner ear infection. Um, and that seemed to trigger the flare up of the, of the UC because obviously your immune system's, you know, fighting the cold and fighting the infection in your ear and it triggers the rest of it. And so those maintenance meds are no longer sufficient because it's my immune system attacking myself. Right.
Um, so long story short, it's, it can, it can be, you know, anywhere between mild and severe, obviously. And in this case, it was a, it was a pretty tough one where, like I said, they put me in the, in the urgent care for a little bit. And, um, what's crazy is I had my first cat scan with contrast. I don't know. Have you ever had a cat scan before? It's super interesting. So they shoot radioactive material into you.
Scott (15:26.39)
No, with contrast, what does that mean?
Jay (15:32.634)
to then when they take the photos to see how that stuff flows through you. And it was the weirdest feeling because they, you know, they try to prep you for it, but they basically say, okay, here comes the dye, which is radioactive material going into your body. No, through an IV, yeah, through an IV. But then like as soon as they did it, I like, my throat started getting super hot.
Scott (15:47.106)
Do you drink it? How they inject it into you or? Oh, weird. Okay, okay.
Jay (15:59.266)
And then, you know, sorry, kids out there, but then my butt started getting really hot. It's like, whoa, I was sitting on like a heating pad for a minute and then it was gone. And so it was, it was the weirdest thing. I've never had a CT. I've never had those things before. So it was a new experience. But the funniest thing about the whole thing was, you know, you have to hold your breath for some period of time while they're doing it. And like the, you know, the prompts come from the machine.
Scott (16:15.022)
Oh, yeah.
Jay (16:28.642)
So there's this big old basically donut looking machine that they put you in the middle of and the prompts, they turn on the machine and the prompts come from the machine. And it was the funniest thing because the, whoever the recording was on the CT scan that I had was like super rude. It was like, hold your breath. And then you're holding your breath. And of course, when you're holding your breath or whatever reason your brain just like, you know, it gets focused and you're like, you know, really attuned to the next.
instruction to when you can breathe. And then like, as soon as they was ready for to let you breathe, the voice to come back on like, you can breathe now. Jeez, you must have been having a bad day. Oh, I don't know, probably 10 seconds 30 seconds. I thought it's not a long time. No, no, no. But still you want someone to come back like, now you can take a breath like a really calming voice, you know, something like
Scott (17:08.36)
How long is your breath hold?
Scott (17:12.922)
Okay, so yeah, yeah. So we're not talking about doing a free dive here. It's not like you have to do a breathe up and
Scott (17:25.951)
It's just brash.
Jay (17:26.382)
Like you want this British lady to be like, go ahead and breathe. It's okay. You know, like instead of like, you can breathe now. I mean, the way it should have been finished, you can breathe now jerk. It felt like it was being said. So anyway, that's, that's what's been going on with me. Like I said, I'm feeling better. You have to get kind of on the treatment. And, um, and once they dial that in right, then you start to feel better and takes a couple of weeks and you recover.
but I have a, it's called a flare up, which is a wonderful, you know, phrase for it, but it's a flare up and I get them, you know, once a year and it does affect my diving because I had missed two boat dives that were scheduled for me for this whole thing, because I can't imagine being out on the boat and having that pain and uncomfortableness and all that kick in and being so far away from shore and being able to, you know, or even being on a dive. So it's not that.
you can't dive with UC, it's that mentally you're kind of going, I don't think I want to put myself in that position. Um, and I have to be careful about how much you exert yourself as you're on, on the mend. You know, my, my natural tendency as soon as I feel a little bit better is like push, push. And I've had to learn over the years, like that kicks it, makes it longer, you know, rather than if I just take some time to, to breathe and rest. So it's been a, it's been a rough,
couple of more than a couple of weeks. And finally, like I said, this last four or five days been on the right treatment, feeling better and looking forward to finally being back in the water and uh, and getting to dive. So yeah, sorry. Didn't share all that with you and sorry out there in the scuba verse. That's where I've been. Uh, now you know, and it's probably TMI, too much information shared and uh, all that, but I know exactly, exactly. And we're holding everybody back from this great.
Scott (19:10.946)
Oh, now I wish I didn't know Jay. I'm just kidding.
Jay (19:18.33)
topic of expedition photography. But I promised myself I would talk about it because I've never talked about it publicly. I've never really shared it. And yet it's something that a lot of people have and deal with or other things people deal with. And I think, you know, I just kind of promised myself this time around, like if I get the opportunity, I'll share. And whatever that means, people think less of me, okay. If they want to talk about it, okay. If they laugh behind my back, okay. But...
It's always been one of those things where I've been mentally a little guarded from it because it feels like something's wrong with me, but it's nothing I did. And that's the thing that made me so mad about it when I was first diagnosed is like, it's not, I get it. If I fell off a cliff because I was cliff diving, which I did a lot in college and I broke my leg and I had to walk with a limp for the rest of my life, you know, or whatever. You know, I took a bunch of...
recreational drugs and it damaged my me to a point, you know, all these other things. With this, it was like, I didn't do anything. It just was part of my genes. And then it happened. And now I have to live with it. And it made me so mad because it's like, I'm okay with a self inflicted thing that I know where it came from, you know, but this whole thing of like, it just, those are the cards you were dealt. There's nothing you can do about it. Made me so mad for a long time. And then
had to figure out how to kind of reconcile that and, you know, experimented with lots of different treatments and found, you know, there's just, it is what it is. And I have to reckon with, with it with myself. And so I said, this first time I shared publicly a little worried about how that's going to go, but Hey, we'll see. And I'm sure, you know, goes from there.
Scott (21:01.314)
think you have anything to worry about. I appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing that. A good friend of mine that I grew up with actually went through the same thing too. And yeah, he had to get part of his maybe this is TMI, but he had to get part of his large intestine removed. Not sure the details of why, but yeah, it caused all sorts of complications and he still lives with the side effects of going through that now.
Jay (21:30.914)
Yeah, that's the crazy part is it's curable with that. If you remove the pieces of the intestine that caused the problem. But then, like you say, there's other complications and considerations that come with that. So it's one of those weird things where it's, you know, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's, Crohn's disease affects the entire intestine, right? Or colon as well.
Scott (21:40.131)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (21:59.022)
Um, whereas I'll sort of colitis affects, you know, what part of it, and usually it's left-sided or right-sided. And so these all live in the same family of things. Um, and yeah, like I've had friends that have full blown crones and have had to go through that. I have other friends that have UC and, you know, again, it's varying degrees of severity for everybody. And, um, lucky for me, I guess, you know, it's, it's mostly
under control except for it seems like once a year, twice a year flares up and usually it's triggered by one of those two things, stress or, uh, you know, getting sick or something like that. So it, so it's not predictable, but it's, you know, at least like somewhat under control for me versus other people, it can be, you know, really hard to get that under control. So in some ways I'm blessed that, you know, that I have the version of it that I have, uh, in other ways it's still, you know,
can knock me off for two, three weeks at a time. And, and that, and with my, the way that I like my lifestyle and the things that we kind of have going on all the different plates that are spinning, it's really hard to get knocked off for two or three weeks. Like everybody else, I'm sure you know, things are going moving without you. So it's tough to it's tough to come back and, and settle in and it's tough also to say, you know, hey, look, like, I need, I need a minute, you know, and here's why.
And I've never been good at saying like, I need a minute because I'm sick and I need to deal with it. And because I always feel like it's cop out, I can push through, I can push through, I don't want to let anyone down. And this time around, it was like, I can't, I just need to break. Otherwise, it's going to be bad for months rather than weeks. So anyway, there's the UC episode, Scott, you didn't know you signed up for that. But there's 20 minutes of spilling my heart there. And we'll, I'm sure Daniel will edit all of this out and say like,
Scott (23:47.932)
Hahaha
Jay (23:56.006)
Well, you know, you should have talked about photography, but with the rude lady, or no, it was a, yeah, it was a rude lady. It was a rude lady this time. Um, yeah, the, at the cat scan. So anyways, speaking of cat scans, those are photos. So let's talk about photos.
Scott (23:56.654)
Brought to you by High Contrast Catscans.
Scott (24:10.614)
They are photos, yeah. They're not underwater, they're internal.
Jay (24:15.802)
This was all planned to have the good transition from the CAT scan into the photos, right? It was perfect, perfect transition. But yeah, so let's set this up a little bit. So like you said in the beginning, with expeditions, it's not just like we're exploring something, although you and I have done that work and planned for it. It can also be just planning for a photography trip, right? Or planning for a specific photograph. But I think maybe there's a separation.
Scott (24:18.958)
Good transition.
Jay (24:44.174)
In the exploration side, I think in one of the first episodes we did together, we talked about documenting or documentary photos. So it's something like, you know, you're going to dive, get in the water, and you're going to take images of the dam, the condition of the dam, for example, that's there. Right. And that takes a level of planning on how you're going to execute that. And that's a very technical, straightforward example, right? It could be, hey, we've never been in this location, and we want to capture
what it looks like and what the, you know, the floor looks like, what kind of life, sea life or marine life is actually in there. Um, what are the key features? So I think about like the Frio thing, that Canyon was really the only feature whole thing other than riverbed, right? But, uh, but okay, you, you got some captured some images of that and to show what it's like under the water there, or you're trying to kind of like people do dive planning guides. So I want to capture.
Scott (25:29.118)
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Jay (25:42.67)
key features of a particular dive site. And then there's kind of the, that's more of the exploration side of the world. Then there's the, I wanna capture a great photo of X, Y, and Z. I'm doing this dive, let's say you're going down to Playa and you're gonna do, you know, the Bull Shark season, which is coming up in, you know, November. And you wanna capture some awesome images of Bull Sharks. That's your goal. That's also considered an expedition. You're going out.
for that purpose, right? And you're gonna plan for that. But there's a level of difference in the sense that some of that is more predictable. We know the conditions, we know kind of what it's gonna be like, we know the animal we wanna capture, right? Maybe we're doing macro work, we wanna capture, you know, tiny jellyfish or whatever it would be, versus the exploration side is more the unknown. How do we plan for what we don't know, what we're gonna see? So I think that's kind of setting up
you know, when we say expedition photography, it includes all of that stuff. But I think there is kind of this separation between we know what we're getting ourselves into and what we want to capture, versus we have no idea what we're getting ourselves into. And we're not we have to be prepared for either everything or, or nothing, right? How do we how do we plan for those things? So curious your thoughts like, let's maybe let's maybe tackle the easy one first, which is I want to go out and I want to capture this shot.
Right? The popular shots right now are like the, what do you call them? The halfway on the surface, halfway under the water shot over under. There we go. Yeah. The over. I've seen some really interesting ones. So let's talk about that. How do you plan? Like I want to capture X shot and over under shot, uh, you know, perfect picture of a, of a pregnant bull shark or, you know, I want to capture the perfect, you know, shot of my teammates on a line.
Scott (27:15.882)
Yeah, yeah, over-under shots. I love those.
Jay (27:39.374)
you know, doing a, doing a deco stop, whatever it might be. How do you plan for that? What do you take? You know, what are kind of the conditions that you're trying to create for that photo?
Scott (27:49.962)
Yeah, so ideally for an over-under shot, you're gonna want the biggest dome port possible. And if you're listening, you might not know what a dome port is. It's like a glass, just imagine a glass dome. It's typically for any sort of wide angle lens as opposed to a really tight telephoto lens. So wide angle, you know, is exactly what it sounds like. On the other end of the spectrum, you have telephoto, which is more of a zoomed in.
But yeah, so if you're shooting in over under shot, you're probably gonna wanna go as wide as possible with as big of a dome port as possible as well. Most people have six inch dome ports and then maybe they might have an eight inch or even a 10 inch on hand if they wanted to specifically shoot over under shots that day. If you try to dive with your 10 inch dome port, you can pull it off, but it adds a lot of positive buoyancy, becomes hard to manage, causes a lot of drag. So.
If you're in an environment that has a lot of current or rough conditions, that big dome port could actually become a pretty big burden. And which brings me to my other point too. So if you're shooting over under shots, the conditions you're looking for are very, very calm. That's what helps you get that nice, pretty looking water line. That's going to be right in the middle of that dome. And that's what's going to give you that image that you're looking for.
that's gonna be half underwater and half above the water. So lighting wise, you're probably not gonna wanna ever do any sort of shot like that midday. Usually you want the sun to be behind you. That way the sun's pointing away from you, illuminating whatever clouds are on the horizon in a nice, you know, nice pretty manner that doesn't look harsh, you know.
If you have too much lighting on top and not enough lighting below, that can lead to some issues. And that's why you also want really bright lights with these wells. So, you know, the sun will be illuminating the top side and your artificial lighting that should be attached to your rig will be illuminating the underside. So that's kind of the basic equipment loadout for a good over and under shot.
Jay (30:08.11)
with that, with the distance that you have with that dome port. So you're not necessarily, you're trying to capture a pretty wide angle because you're getting, let's say, the boat, the waterline, the diver or whatever below it. So how do you, how do you, I mean, are the lights strong enough that you're bringing to light the underwater side? Can they reach that far? How does it?
Scott (30:17.91)
Pretty wide, yeah.
Scott (30:24.171)
Yeah.
Scott (30:31.65)
So that's the hard part. So, and to answer your question, with these wide angle lenses, you'd be surprised. You have to get really close to the subject to make it even come close to filling the frame. If you have a wide angle lens and you have it inside of a dome port, you'll notice if you ever watch somebody take photographs like this, say for example, they swim up to a grouper and try to take like a portrait of that grouper with their wide angle lens, it is almost like the mouth of the grouper is about to touch the dome port. They're pretty close.
That's typically what you call a close focus or a yeah, close focus wide angle and same applies for these over under shots. So if you're if you have your teammates that are doing their deco stop, you know, 15 feet below the surface, obviously, you can't get right up to them. But you know, they're just gonna be a part of the scene. They might be illuminated by your lights and kind of a minimal way your lights will probably just be kind of filling in some shadows that you could bring up later on in post.
But yeah, it's, it is, um, that's a challenge that that's definitely a challenge with your wide angle lenses. Um, if you're not right up on the subject, they're going to be pretty small in the, in the frame.
Jay (31:44.802)
Yeah, it's interesting. And also from a lighting perspective, I know that when you're planning for some of these, there's also a lot of, I don't know if it's new, but I would say it's more emerging, at least from my view, of actually lighting the environment. So you're taking lights and placing them in different places. So I've seen this a lot in caves, but it also applies in other areas as well. We're actually placing lights.
strategically to light different pieces that then get captured in that wide angle shot. So I think it's super interesting that it's not just the lighting that's on your rig, but there are actual environmental lights that are getting placed and purposefully, right? And in different places and different intensities at different angles to then light up the environment or the rest of what's ever in that shot.
and to bring those things at least into somewhat of the actual composition of the photo, which I think is really cool. I mean, that takes a lot of planning and thought, and I think probably a lot of trial and error depending on the environment that you're doing. But that's another way that I've seen some divers that are pretty serious about their photography approach lighting, because lighting is so important when it comes to your photos.
Scott (33:04.746)
Absolutely. Yeah, and that would be the best way to do a shot like what you described to be honest you would uh, What we've done things so we've had you know Divers use their canister lights that they have mounted to their hand and they just Illuminate their buddy with that light and it kind of goes vice versa like that typically works But what you're talking about to placing lights off camera that are not attached to the main rig if you have the time to plan That out that's the type of stuff that's really fun to do and that's gonna give you the best results I know
a friend of mine when we dove in the missile silo a few months ago, he took a really cool shot where he put a strobe, he tied a strobe facing behind the diver, he tied it to the back of her back mounted doubles, facing away from her, basically facing towards her fins. And there was like a shed underwater inside that missile silo and had all this cool looking structure on it, some corrugated aluminum or steel or whatever it was.
Um, so what happened was when he took, when he took the shot of her, he was facing her with his camera and with his two strobes mounted on his camera. When he took that shot, of course, his strobes kind of filled in, um, uh, the features on her so you can see what she looks like, but the strobe that was mounted to her was turned up as bright as possible and illuminated the entire background. So now you have this like really cool looking backlighting.
And it's a really cool effect. You see that a lot in caves as well. It's a really good way to take a photograph of a diver in a cave and that a strobe that's mounted on the diver does a really good job of just illuminating the features of that cave, you know? Cause that's probably one of the hardest things to do. I don't have a whole lot of experience doing cave photography cause I'm not a cave diver, but based on the different images that I've looked at of people that are doing that thing, that seems to be the best result is.
Jay (34:52.576)
Yeah.
Scott (34:59.218)
you know, taking a lot of time like that, like what you said, to place lights around different features and especially if you have, you know, multiple lights you can place in different places and there's maybe a feature in the cave that you want to light up in a specific way because they're obviously going to look more flattering lit up from one angle versus another angle based on those features and it takes a lot of trial and error, I'm sure, and a lot of planning.
