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kodak.com
presents
Rick Sammon
Underwater Photography
June 27, 2001
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Page 3 of 8
Trump:
How different are lighting conditions underwater from land?
Rick Sammon:
You'd be surprised at how bright it is underwater in the Caribbean and the Pacific and the Red Sea and Indo-Pacific. The things that you look for are shadows and the reason you use a flash or flashes underwater is because you want to fill in those shadows. And you want to be able to see the color so the flash lets you see the color. And the flash also adds more contrast. But underwater you really look at light the same way as on land. You look for highlights, shadows, contrasts. So learning how to see the light in any photo situation is key.
Roy:
What would you say is the most challenging for you when doing underwater photos?
Rick Sammon:
Not running out of film. Because I see so much and I want to photograph so much. Running out of film and time. Scuba divers are limited underwater by time. If they stay down too long they could get the bends and die. So being careful. And I've been in so many situations where I just want to take one more shot and my diver computer tells me I must go up and I have to go up. So the challenge is really time and running out of film. However, my most challenging assignment was diving in Lake Baikal, Siberia, under 3 feet of ice. I was frozen! Literally frozen!
Nickname 99:
How many photos do you take during one dive?
Rick Sammon:
It depends on how many cameras I have. I never come up without shooting every exposure, I always shoot with 36 exposure film. If I'm diving alone, I have two cameras, one with a wide angle lens and one with a macro lens, and I can handle the two cameras underwater by myself. So that's 72 pictures. And then if my wife is carrying 2-3 cameras, that's another bunch of pictures. So it varies how many I take, but every underwater professional photographer that I know is happy if he or she gets one great shot per roll.
Corn Poppy:
What causes a reef to become covered in algae? And why does that harm a reef?
Rick Sammon:
Several things can cause that. I'm glad you asked. When the mangroves are destroyed and hotels are built along the shore, and deforestation on islands around reefs happen, all this stuff adds silt into the water. The silt can smother the reef. So that's one thing. The other thing is over-fishing. If all the herbivores, the fish who eat algae, are taken out of the water, the algae can quickly cover the reef. And it might not come back. So it's the over-fishing and deforestation, removing the mangroves, blasting for hotels along the shoreline. I've seen reefs in Lombok, Indonesia, where I've not seen a single fish on the reef.
Presley:
You mentioned your concern for coral reefs. How much have they been affected by the human presence?
Rick Sammon:
I think the biggest enemy of the coral reefs is man. It's really the biggest. My friend who's sitting with me, Rick Ford, the manager of the Jules' Undersea Lodge, reminded me thankfully that coral reefs do go through cycles over eons. So that is one factor also.
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