Surfing and making photographs are two
pretty defining passions of mine, and every now and then they inevitably cross
over.
But, if I’m honest, I’d always choose to be
in the sea rather than stood on the beach watching it. With the cheapest commercially available
waterhousing for a decent camera costing at least a grand (I’m not talking
about swimming out with a go-pro here) it would seem that water-based surf
photography is a game for an ever-shrinking number of professionals or those
with a hefty hobby budget. I mean, how many jobbing photographers
these days have at least a grand burning a hole in their pockets for a piece of kit that
they’d be lucky to see generate a few hundred quid in sold images?
Not me.
So I made one.
Measure twice and make a model.
I ended up making two waterhousings actually. I have long held on to the philosophy that if
you’re able to do something yourself then you should do so – not just as a way
of saving money or acquiring something that you couldn’t otherwise afford, but
as a means of learning new skills and challenging oneself. Perhaps it’s just that I have a problem with
writing to-do lists and not sitting still, born of an awareness that time is a
precious commodity.
I started out researching waterhousings for
surf photography – commonly known as “splash” housings and different to their
deep-sea diving counterparts. I had the choice
of fiberglass and resin as construction materials (the honours project for my
degree involved the use of advanced composite materials for marine engineering
applications, so I was comfortable with that option) or folded and welded
aluminium which I'm slightly less au-fait with. I went with the aluminium challenge.
A photographer who runs a
gallery at the end of my street, Nick Wapshott, kindly lent me his commercially
bought waterhousing overnight to take a look at, and I asked a few questions of
Tim Nunn (editor of Wavelength Magazine and professional surf-lensman) who gave
me some advice on how to trigger the shutter mechanism. This was the biggest issue – I had no
problems making a waterproof box of some description to put my camera in, but
finding a way of pressing the button without springing a leak was a
challenge. As with most of my projects,
I started out with fairly modest intentions until I realised how much time and
effort I was investing and then figured that I might as well do a proper job.
I measured up my cameras (I shoot with the
slightly puffed-up digital version of an older analogue camera and they’re such
similar sizes that I wanted to make a housing that they would both fit and
function in) and made cardboard models.
Friends and acquaintances kindly rummaged in the scrap bins of their
workshops and garages, and from a range of sources I ended up with some odd lengths of
aluminium tubing that I could machine into lens ports, a bigger piece that
might fit a camera, and some offcuts of thin-guage sheet aluminium that I could
fold into a box.
Now, I like to think that I’m fairly handy
but I definitely know my limits and one of those is TIG welding aluminium and
another one is precision milling.
Luckily for me, just down the raod from me on Bradfords Quay in Wadebridge are two companies who
specialise in fettling metal: Daften Die-Casting specialise in precision aluminium work and Grant and Kevin there
took my crude CAD designs and machined the face plates for my housings with the
incredibly fiddly grooves for the o-ring seals.
I then delivered a box of bits to Will Irons at MGC Engineering a couple
of doors along for the guys there to TIG weld together for me. Where I would
undoubtably have blown holes in the thin aluminum they executed seamless
joints that are not only functional, but beautiful in that functional raw metalwork sort of
way.
The MGC magicians worked wonders with welding.
I now had two containers that looked a lot
like camera housings. I took them back
to Daftens where they were powdercoated bright yellow because if you’re going
to make a submarine then it really ought to be a yellow one, right? I’m sure that there’s a functional reason for marine submersible equipment often being this colour but I don’t need to know about it.
The "Soucoupe" and "Jacqui" nearing completion.
I sourced some thick, clear acrylic and had
it cut to fit the face plates and ports then got back at the handles of a lathe
and surprised myself at my ability to actually work accurately when I turn my
mind to it, turning down the tubing into lens ports to accept my 50mm prime
lens. A fisheye lens would require a
domed port, something that there is no way I could produce, so I settled for
the fact that I would be shooting from slightly further away from the action
and capturing a realistic point of view of what the human eye would normally
see.
I stayed late at Otter Surfboards one Friday and mixed up a small batch of epoxy glue to nervously assemble the
faceplates and ports, horribly aware that just one tiny smudge of resin on the
lens port would bin the entire project.
Finally, to solve my switch concern, I found a company that produces
housings for underwater dive cameras and scientific survey equipment (Greenaway Marine) and
ordered a simple mechanical switch from them that I could machine to fit my
housing and camera. I assembled
everything and then, in early December, took one of the empty containers for a
swim in the waves, relieved that it didn’t fill up with seawater and drag me
down to the seabed like an anchor. I
then put a roll of film in my analogue camera and took that out, realising just
what surf photographers would have had to go through in the days before the
digital revolution – swimming back to the beach every thirty-six shots to take
the whole business apart and change the film must have been hard work: Thirty-six shots really doesn’t last very long in the sea.
Then the “weather” arrived, and the sea was
near enough off-limits for any sane attempts at water photography for weeks on
end. Until this week. Torn between making up for a lot of lost
wave-riding opportunities and testing my handiwork, I tried my best to strike a
balance in between actually doing some work.
Having surfed on one day with great waves and beautiful flat, grey,
wintery light that looked as cold as it was, I returned to the following spot
with my housemate Ben the following day with my digital camera nervously
ensconced in it’s (hopefully) waterproof yellow case. With more than thirty-six exposures to play
with, I think that in between swimming against a rip like a river, wearing some
monstrously thick wedges on my head and getting bounced off the seabed a lot, I
got some alright shots for a trial run.
Here below are some of the results:
Under a pitching lip.
Foam textures.
Scratching over a lump.
Difficult conditions for surfing and shooting.
Benny dodged this barrel and tore into a massive turn just as the whitewater engulfed me. He's been kicking himself ever since for not tucking himself in there.
The lefts here are normally not much good.
Not on this day though.
Pitching
