Necessity is the mother of invention for this underwater photographer...

Once upon a time… while on a diving assignment in Vanuatu, I encountered several cuttlefish during a dive. Since my underwater camera housing was set up with a Nikon F3 body and a Nikon 55mm macro lens, conventional underwater photography thinking would dictate that wide-angle


photography would be impossible with a macro lens. Such are the fundamental laws of underwater photography… one cannot change their lens underwater.

It was at that moment that a fellow underwater photographer set their aim upon taking a wide-angle picture of me with the cuttlefish in the foreground. In one of those ah ha, I think I can, moments, I focused on the cuttlefish using my macro lens. Miraculously, I was able to include my fellow diver in the background as I focused my lens on the cuttlefish. The results were pleasing and the magazines editor agreed and used that unlikely picture for the magazine cover shot!

Sometimes…in the mystical realm beyond the limitations of both one’s talent and their equipment… the diving gods simply seem to smile upon us...

Deep Sea Diver for a Day!

I came across a couple pictures from the early eighties taken of me dressed in commercial hard hat diving gear. The pictures were taken in Seattle, Washington, at the Divers Institute of Technology in Seattle, a place where people go to fulfill their dreams of becoming successful commercial divers.

I was participating in a scuba divers day trip to the facility. Apart from spending about ten minutes underwater walking around in Lake Washington in this hard hat gear, we also experienced a decompression chamber dive to a simulated depth of 160 feet!

Sometimes in life... one gets to do some very cool things ~

Northwest Dive & Travel Show, WOW!

The 2008 Northwest Dive & Travel Show exceeded all expectations and sold out! It is rare for a first run trade show to sell out so drinks all around to Northwest Dive News' Rick Stratton and the small army of show volunteers who made it all happen. My presentation, "Liquid Rush - Descent into British Columbia's Nakwakto Rapids" was well received and it was great to catch up with some old diving friends. We will definitely plan on attending the 2009 show .

If you are interested in diving Nakwakto Rapids and doing some of the best cold water diving in the universe, contact John DeBoeck, one of the most knowledgeable diving guides in the Pacific Northwest, at the Browning Pass Hideaway Lodge...

www.vancouverislanddive.com

We also attended Captain Mike Lever's excellent presentation on diving with Great White sharks at Mexico's, Guadalupe Island. This surely ranks as being one of the best Great White shark diving experiences on the planet. Check it out...

www.nautilusexplorer.com