During the In-Water Photography course last semester Ralph Clevenger took our class on a 5-day boat trip to dive at Catalina Island. This was easily the best class I have taken so far at Brooks Institute, although my current semester is shaping up to be all-time. Heres a few shots of the underwater landscape found just off shore at Catalina. Max and I explored the underwater kelp forests top to bottom for the better part of a week. Underwater caves, sharks and sea lions were all experienced first hand during our dives out on Catalina, which is one of the most stunning underwater worlds I've ever had the opportunity to see.
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The Mask
Here are a few shots I took of an Atomic Aquatics dive mask geared more towards the commercial realm of underwater photography. I shot the self portrait off Catalina Island while the other two were done in a pool in Santa Barbara, CA. My buddy Chris Laughter helped by modeling for me in the pool. Its amazing what you can do when lighting subjects underwater.
The White Fire
The past couple of weeks have been extremely active in the natural disaster department. Mother Nature has been very relentless on parts of the country whether it be enormous tornado's devastating the midwest or one-hundred foot flames engulfing the Californian mountain sides. Granted you can not blame the weather for a single campers stupidity when it comes to properly disposing of hot coals; You can however say the drought that we are experiencing here in Southern California had something to do with the rapid ignition of last mondays "White Fire". We experienced a beautiful Memorial Day here in Santa Barbara up until about 2:45pm when you could first see the enormous smoke cloud billowing over the mountains bordering town to the north. The thick plume of smoke and ash blew directly over downtown Santa Barbara all the way out to the Channel Islands and beyond. The fire managed to burn nearly 2,000 acres before the days end on Monday evening and then the next morning a thick fog accumulated in the affected area and helped fire fighters completely contain the blaze by Tuesday Night. Being from New York, I have never seen anything like it; I'm extremely glad nobody got hurt and I salute all the fire fighters that did an amazing job of keeping the situation under control.
