Hello everyone!  Wow, has it been a busy couple of days.  Wait, weeks.

No…

…almost 2 months?!

Uh-oh.

It goes without saying that I’ve been off to a wonderfully busy start, and I can’t thank all of the amazing contributors so far that have kept me working so hard.

Since beginning the scholarship, I’ve crossed the country three times, drove the entire length of California, and found myself on some islands smaller than the airport I’m writing you from.  I’ve dove in oceans, quarries, canals, aquariums, chambers, and even ponds- all while averaging a new diving or medical certification every 6 days.

A big thank you to Beneath the Sea, Ocean Technology Systems, Scripps Institute, Divers Unlimited International (DUI), the Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber, Reef Photo and Video, the staff and volunteers of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and California Academy of Sciences, the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society and Divers Alert Network for opening your doors and fostering such amazing opportunities.  Equal recognition goes to the many past scholars I’ve met, especially to those who have opened their homes to me: Sara Shoemaker Lind, Kerry Nickols, and Craig Nelson- you’ve all made me feel more at home than I’d thought possible while living out of a suitcase!

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Now as I continue to work on giving each of these experiences their due written justice, I wanted to take a quick out-of-order glimpse into what I’ve just been doing.  This past week I was lucky enough to attend Backscatter Underwater Photo and Video’s Digital Shootout 2016: an all-inclusive educational whirlwind of underwater photography!

Backscatter’s Digital Shootout is, simply put, the most fun you can have while learning an entire new way of life.  Editing photos on a beach?  Sure.  Discussing autofocus settings in a hammock?  Even better.  The immersion experience is consuming, and it would take a deliberate effort not to be a better photographer by week’s end.

Luckily for me, Berkley White- owner and founder of Backscatter – reached out and asked me to join him for this year’s event at the picturesque Little Cayman Beach Resort.  I mean, seriously, look at this place:

Not to mention, you get to travel via a very intimate small-plane experience:

While I had little underwater photography experience to work from, the legendary Marty Snyderman was kind enough to donate his time and expertise to me one morning-turned-afternoon prior.  The preparation and well-honed advice he gave me was invaluable in my ability to soak up the knowledge this past week provided.  [Side story: have you ever been walking in to meet one of your heroes for a one-on-one photography session and have a bird poop on you?  Because I have.  Thanks Marty, for taking that one with a laugh.]

Additionally, I was given another ace-in-the-hole: Reef Photo and Video and Nauticam were  kind enough to provide me with a camera and underwater housing for the year.  And not just any camera and housing…

Yeah.  An Olympus EM-10 II with Nauticam housing, wide and macro lenses on a wet mount, and Inon S-2000 strobes.  In addition, Light and Motion provided me with two gorgeous Sola 2500 Video lights to round out the perfect package.  Thank you to both Reef Photo and Video, Nauticam, and Light and Motion, for your generous support!

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“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” -Henri Cartier-Bresson

Despite my early advantages, I arrived for my week of instruction feeling a bit like an impostor: who am I, to spend time with these phenomenal photographers?  If it takes 10,000 underwater shots to reach your stride, I was at about 2 and a half; and yet here I was looking to learn from professionals who teach other professionals as a profession.

But as is often the case, the worry was unfounded as within moments I was surrounded by experienced teachers adjusting their advice to any and all skill levels.

For me, the benefit was often in the little moments you experience living and diving right alongside the greats.  On our way to the first dive site, Berkley was kind enough to help fix some exposure settings I was struggling with and gave some invaluable tips on photographing the dive site.  A passing comment on white balance from a seasoned guest followed.  And in the ensuing five minutes of casual conversation I was saved from an under-exposed and irreparably green set of memories from the first wreck dive of my life!

Once you had made your shots (or mistakes, as was often my case) the daily seminars provided a great resource for post-processing tips and tricks.  A big thanks to Erin Quigley and Steffan Schulz for giving me some great new tools in Lightroom and Premiere respectively.  One thing you quickly learn listening to these experts is that editing isn’t all about saving an image or video- it’s about making a program work for you to improve workflow efficiency.  Who hasn’t found themselves dreading that new folder of 1,000 digital images? Or trying to find that one really good 10 second clip in 3 hours of footage?  It was a life-saver to be able to organize my media so much faster, especially considering the pure volume you can create at such a photogenic location.

Which brings me to the diving- Little Cayman lives up to its reputation. The wildlife is uniquely unafraid; never before have I been able to get so close with such consistency to any creature I saw.

Sometimes they were too unafraid, as Becca Hurley of Scuba Diving and Sport Diver magazine experienced: “I had the perfect shot with a grouper, then out of nowhere a stingray was blocking me- get out of the way dude!”

I, too was quickly spoiled, shrugging off encounters that would’ve been dive-making just a week ago.  But there’s a unique advantage I found photographically: once you’re not trying to capture only the rare encounters, you begin to open your mind up to taking shots of fish that wouldn’t normally command a second thought artistically.  And for me, those became some of my

best pictures simply because I could relax and stop chasing another far-off turtle long enough to actually compose a reliable shot.

At the end of the week, there’s an awards ceremony for all the guests to celebrate and show off their hard work.  It was a lot of fun seeing the many improvements both and large and small that each participant had made.  Prizes literally covered over ten thousand dollars in travel and camera equipment, yet at the end of the day guests were so collaborative, relaxed,

and dedicated to the cause of improving their images that winning a prize was simply icing on the cake. (As a guest of the crew I wasn’t allowed to enter, but that was probably for the best- I get to pretend I would’ve won until proven otherwise)

 

 

 

Overall, I can’t thank the Backscatter crew enough for all they’ve taught me in such a short period of time.  I don’t think Cartier-Bresson and his 10,000 photo limit could have anticipated something like this: spending a week with artistic pioneers and technical instructors alike made for a transformative learning environment that’s hard to beat.

As always, I look forward to improving my underwater imagery throughout the year- but in the meantime I’ll never forget the lessons, the stingrays, or the beach!

For a gallery of some of my favorite images taken this week, click any picture below- or simply scroll and enjoy!

Chris Millbern – Little Cayman – 2016