look out below
Feb 02
by David in Underwater 0 comments

Underwater by the Numbers

I've spent the last few weeks rebuilding the site under a new WordPress theme. Normally, switching themes is a pretty simple process, but this new theme uses a completely different image gallery gizmo than the old one, which means I had to rebuild all the galleries one-by-one. Even though this was a time-intensive process, I quite liked the opportunity to look back through all the photos from these past seven years. As I worked my way through them, I started to wonder just how many underwater sessions I've done. How many models have I worked with? How many times have I clicked the shutter while squinting through the blurry port of my underwater camera case? (more…)
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Aug 18
by David in Underwater 0 comments

Underwater Photopalooza 2013!

The season for doing underwater photography in an outdoor pool in Seattle is rather short. As a result, I'm somewhat limited to how many individual sessions I can sanely schedule during the summer and every year I have many more people wanting to do shoots than I can possibly schedule. So this year I came up with an idea: Instead of trying to schedule everyone individually, I booked two free-for-all days where I invited models to come by for a few minutes or a couple hours. I modestly called the event Underwater Photopalooza 2013 and waited to see who would show up. In short, Photopalooza was a blast! My friend John Cornicello was also along to do some shooting, thereby ensuring that neither of us would have to shoot for four hours straight. Altogether there were eight different models, of whom I shot six:
  • Jesse Bell-Jones, returning from her 2010 rope shoot
  • Whisper, making her third underwater appearance
  • Sara, returning from last year
  • The Luminous Pariah, my first  male underwater model
  • Milost, in her first ever photo shoot
  • Randi Rascal, who I can't believe I've never shot before
You can find all of these wonderful people in the 2013 gallery. Enjoy!
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Aug 01
by David in Underwater 0 comments

Underwater with Seraphina Fiero and Very Long Fingertips

My second underwater session of 2013 was with Seraphina Fiero, a belly dancer and burlesque performer who currently works with Stripped Screw Burlesque. She brought a lot of great outfits and props, but the thing you will see in the majority of the images are the golden Thai fingertips, long metal adornments that could be rather dangerous if you're not careful. I originally thought we'd just use them for a few shots, but they looked so great that they simply stuck around for a good portion of the session. I had to do a bit of rearranging when Seraphina showed up and I saw that her hair was nearly jet-black. I typically shoot against a black backdrop in the pool and I've learned that extra dark hair can totally vanish against it. We ended up doing a bit of work against the black, but the majority of the time I had a white backdrop in place. Even though I have a preference for using black, I have an even stronger preference for keeping things visible.
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Jul 29
by David in Underwater 0 comments

First Underwater of 2013: Ruby Mimosa

The underwater photo season officially started at the beginning of July when I had the opportunity to shoot Ruby Mimosa, a local performer who is part of the Atomic Bombshells burlesque troupe. We had exceptionally great weather and I was very happy to verify that my underwater camera case had not developed any leaks while sitting dormant for the past 10 months. Even though we shot at the beginning of July, it has taken me until now to get the photos posted due to other scheduling conflicts. In fact, I'm going to cut this short so I can get to work on the photos I took the following weekend!
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