The Big Blue

The oceans cover 70% of Earth's surface.  We have technology (the Hubble Space Telescope) that can form images made from light that has travelled over 10 billion trillion kilometres from the edge of our known Universe, and yet we can see less than a hundred metres under the surface of the ocean because of the way that seawater absorbs and scatters light.  We just don't know all that much about our oceans considering how influential they are to life on this planet.  We know more about space and that strikes me as being a touch ridiculous.

We exist on a watery planet, and we rely on that core element.  But the oceans are big; perhaps bigger than we can easily comprehend.  Only a few hundred years ago, nothing in terms of the duration of human evolution, we still believed that the waters of the world's oceans just poured straight off the edge of our flat planet - they were that infinite that the water just kept on coming.  And so because they are so enormous, often stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction, some people still believe that their vast ability to dilute and distribute whatever we put in them makes them cheap and easy dumping grounds.  But this abuse of our planets largest ecosystems is catching up with us, and the ability of the oceans to absorb our excess carbon dioxide and maintain the status quo is starting to tip and our actions are altering the delicate chemical balance maintained by them.     

We are all emotionally attached to the oceans - some more strongly than others but nonetheless every single human being has an unquestionable and deep affinity for these massive bodies of water far larger, greater, and mysterious than we can comprehend.  We all lose ourselves staring at them given half an opportunity.  Why?  Maybe it's because, depending on what you believe and where you place your faith, several million years ago our ancient, ancient, predecessors flapped out of them when they became too crowded and adapted to life on "Earth".  Perhaps, considering this, we were a bit wide of the mark when naming this planet of ours.  Now there's something to consider on World Oceans Day.  

Don't Buy It, Build It: My Yellow Submarine

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

A Letter of Thanks

Dear Mother Ocean/The Seven Seas/The Big Blue,

This letter is long overdue, because in all this time I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to say thank you.

Thanks for all the good times. Thanks for all the good waves.

Thanks for being so enthralling and for captivating me ever since I can remember, for being so full of wonder and living up to all of the hype. Thanks for always keeping a little back to keep me guessing though, wondering what’s still hiding beneath the surface.

Thank you for always being there, wherever I go; you’re always there when I look out of the window in the morning and you’re still there at the end of the day and I find your constant presence comforting. It’s so nice of you to give the sun a place to sleep at night.

Thank you for making the “sea air” and the positive ions that blow on the wind, keeping me cheerful.

Thank you for being so floaty.

Thank you for getting me from A to B so often, for allowing me to get around a bit and see other places.

Thanks for being so accepting, supportive and accommodating, but thanks also for scaring me. Whenever I get a bit too big for my boots you’re always there to put me back in my box and keep me humble. Sometimes you terrify me, other times you bounce me off the bottom, hold me under, pull my limbs in wrong directions and disorientate me, but I know that it’s all for my own good. I have enormous respect for you, more than I can articulate here.

When we have a bad day and don’t quite see eye to eye I know that more often than not it’s the wind’s fault, not yours.

Thanks for making my landings soft.

Thanks for dinner the other night, and for all those other times that you’ve provided me with something to eat.

Cheers for letting me wash in your waves. And for being such a good wake-up, I’d rather you than a cup of coffee any day.

I really like the way you’re always cool on a hot day and, most of the time, not as cold as the air in winter. You’re never as extreme in your temperatures and I really like that. On that note, nice one for regulating global temperatures.

Good work absorbing all of the carbon that humans release, I’m sorry that the job has fallen largely on you to do. I’m sorry too, on behalf of the human race, for all of the plastic. For what it’s worth I try to do my bit to remove the bits that I see from in and around you and I know many others do too.

Thank you for being there when I need a bit of quiet time to sit and reflect, for helping me to find the answers that I seek and not passing judgment on me.

Thanks for always being more interesting to watch than TV.

Thanks for all of the beach treasure, the shells and the seaglass and webbles that you make, the flotsam and jetsam that you carry to shore. Thanks for making sand, even though it fills my pockets and always ends up in my bed. It’s a nice little reminder that I always take away with me.

Thank you for delivering messages in bottles.

Thanks for being such a great horizon.

Thank you for giving me focus, drive and purpose. Thank you for giving me so many good memories.

Thanks for being such a good friend.

I appreciate it all more than you know.

Images, from the top down:

• Quiet Sunday afternoon, Playa Garza, Costa Rica
• Under the sea, North Shore Oahu, Hawaii
• Geographe Bay, WA
• School of baitfish, Hawaii
• Serenity, Sri Lanka
• Playing with the waves, Cabarita, Australia
• Sunset at Playa Guiones, Costa Rica
• The infamous "Neptune at Horta" - better than TV.

Negative Ions = Positive Humans

Getting in the sea just for the sake of it...Immsouane, Morocco.

X-processed out of date slide film.

Being by the sea makes you happy.

People have been chirping on about how good sea air is for you since Victorian times, "taking the sea air" was even prescribed by British Doctors back then, and being lucky enough to live down beside the seaside I'd have to agree that there's something in it.

The science is a bit wafty but it's here's the theory: When waves break or the wind and sun evaporate seawater, the molecules are broken apart and split into charged atoms, or ions, and released into the atmosphere. The predominant minerals in seawater are sodium and chloride (sodium chloride is the salt we put on our food) which are both negative charged ions, and the story goes that negative ions make us feel better by increasing blood oxygenisation and having a similar effect to sunlight by increasing seratonin levels in our brains (the stuff that makes us happy). If you spend your working days surrounded by computers emitting that high voltage buzz or standing over a photocopier which spits out positive ions then chances are that your face isn't lit up by a smile when you walk into the office. Not so when you're beside the seaside.

The sea temperature in the UK gets pretty low by the end of winter. 6.5 degrees Celcius this day and this lady still went for a swim in the sea and came out smiling. Huge props.

So now we all have another excuse up our sleeves for going down to the beach and taking a big deep breath. Whether you're just beside the sea taking a walk on the beach or holding a fishing rod, or in and on the sea surrounded by negative ions surfing, swimming or sailing, you can claim you're improving your physical and mental health. It doesn't matter if you don't believe the hype, it's definitely another string for your bow when you get cornered for having a two surf day and not getting anything else done, and I'm pretty sure that any surfers stuck inland in cities will testify.

There's a whole lot of negative ions in the air around here. The Indian and Southern Oceans colliding of Cape Leeuwin, South West Western Australia.