The life ‘Sous-marin’
A document on my adventures with pools, water and, mermaids.
My Intent
It was my intent to try to capture the dark underwater, floating scenes seen in the anime ‘ghost in the shell’ shelling scene. These scenes convey the idea of being submerged in something, to have an idea surround everything and permeate every aspect of the scene. This resonates quite heavily with my idea of cyberpunk and the immersive nature that technology can have but it also has the effect (created mostly by floating in this space) of projecting an idea of freedom that this technology could bring.
Its also my first ever attempt at this so let’s give it a go….what could go wrong, right.
Planning to execute my intent
I don’t know about you but I make notes about EVERYTHING! It’s a bit much sometimes. This allows me to focus on the things that matter for this project and cut away all the crappy or impossible ideas that would, in some way, take away from the project.
All the notes
I didn’t know how to execute an underwater shoot. In order to figure it out how, I needed to do a lot of research, not just on the artistic side of this project but also looking into the technical and technological side of it. This is one of the few situations where the tech DOES matter. For example, unless your camera is waterproof, you are screwed. In terms of art, I knew what aesthetic I wanted to tap into but to really lock in what emerged from my research I surrounded myself with as many forms of cyberpunk from movies, books and, images that I could find (this was over ambitious for this shoot but will serve me in later projects).
I also asked questions of people I knew, asked them what they thought about these ideas and (more importantly) sorted through their comments to find the gold in the opinions.
Equipment Check
Camera - Nikon D750, I could have rented a bigger camera or something with more megapixels etc. but in the end, I stayed with something I was familiar with.
Flashguns - SB900, old but see above.
Housing - Ewa-marine housing (essentially a plastic bag) was reliable and affordable. see www.ewa-marine.com/
Testing of the housing
Boom - Needed something to hold the flash over the water
PC cable and trigger - back up if Nikon CLS didn’t work (more about this later)
Goggles - Actually a big deal. Needed to find ones that allowed me to see clearly but not get in the way.
Nose plug - cause water up yer nose hurts.
Weight belt - it came with 5kg of weights…don’t wear 5kg of weight in a 5m dive pool!
Flippers - I will want to move around the water and these made it super easy to do so meant I could concentrate on other things.
35mm Sigma ART lens (sooooo good), needed crispy good sharpness in my images, this seemed like the best way of guaranteeing it.
www.wexphotovideo.com/sigma-35mm-f14-dg-hsm-lens-nikon-fit-1533947/
Technical issues
The flashes would not fire. Seems Nikon CLS has the same issue that a radio trigger would have had which is if it is submerged in more than about 15cm of water it will be prevented from communicating with other flashes…bugger. More importantly, however, PLAN B (the flash trigger that I got) didn’t work. This was entirely my fault. It simply doesn’t work if I plug it into my SB-900′s directly (because the flash is expecting to be told something it can understand from that port) but needs a small adapter (in my case this was one of my radio triggers with a pc cord port) to make it work.
AND FINALLY, that housing is an absolute bitch to work with. It was effective at keeping everything dry but near impossible to change ANY settings on the camera or flash (yeah I had a flash mounted on my camera to fire another flash…stop judging).
Results
Good. I really enjoyed this shoot. I also managed to pull some decent images out of it too!
Bad. The technical issues meant I couldn’t get THE image I wanted.
Ugly. It gave me a cold. bastard.
What is next
Get the equipment working - It does work, I was just too stupid to remember how to work it!
Next shoot, keep it to 2 or 3 models as I did before. Too many models would be too difficult to coordinate (learnt that from past shoots).
Assistants…I had one but she bailed (she was ill). Oh, sweet Jesus, an assistant would have been nice. Shout out to the RCP staff that stepped in. Thank you. xxx
Better housing. A solid housing and not the bag. The ewe-marine products are great for a budget option.
I may have to sell a testicle to afford a solid housing.
Can you help?
…yes, you probably can. Get in touch if you want to model or assist (or if you just have an idea).
Be polite
Be efficient
Have a plan to shoot everyone you meet