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My portfolio
by Trevor Rees
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I'm very excited to have won the 'Best of British'
portfolio. I had hoped I could have a good showing in this category
as I very rarely dive overseas.
I'm 46 and work for Severn Trent Water Ltd as a
Commercial waste Advisor - a sort of pollution control/regulation job
for large industrial sites.
I got my first camera - a Nikonos 111 about 22
years ago.
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1) Rock pool and jumping boy
For this portfolio I decided that after my
winning image in this years Splash In -British UK prints, I would
structure my images around a couple of split level images. This image
is another one from a series of images I took of my son jumping over
a rock pool in Cornwall in April 2007. I am standing up to my waist
in a big pool and my son was happy just to keep non- stop jumping
until I'd got the shot technically correct. A few have wondered if
there was some manipulation but this is a straight shot and the RAW
file looked great. I had hoped to shoot with available light but it
just did not work and was forced to use strobes to illuminate the
underwater scene
Nikon D80, 10.5mm lens, fisheye dome, dual
Sea and Sea YS110s on low power. F10 1/200sec 200ISO
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2) Seal and Fins
I took this shot on Lundy island this
September 2007. The visibility was
very poor. My buddy had long since run out of air leaving me alone
with
this seal. The seal was doing what seals do best - creeping up behind
you and nibbling your fins. I like the comical nature of my frog fins
and thought it made a simple and slightly different take on a seal
shot. It fitted nicely in the top centre of the portfolio.
Nikon D80, Sigma 18-50mm @18, compact dome,
available light F8 1/50sec 400ISO
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3) Rock pool, Boy and Crab
This split image balanced the first one and
is also from April 2007. The scene is the same and I'm trying to
capture the many happy hours I've spent with my son messing about in
rock pools. I often find myself on family holidays, frustrated and
wondering how I can get another dive opportunity. A rock pool and no
dive gear was my therapy. I'm standing up to my waist in my drysuit
but with no dive kit. I was always struck by how gin clear the viz is
in these rockpools is and why no one bothers to photograph in them.
It's nice to be free from dive kit, although hiking with a housed
SLR, two strobes plus my drysuit in a rucksack to find a suitable
pool is quite hard work.
I have to come clean with this image though
and admit that it's a
composite. The original edible crab we found in the pool was too
small for any drama in the picture. My son was still fascinated by
the crab he was looking at but I've added a bigger crab from a shore
dive from up in
Scotland. The crab you see is just plonked on top of the original
crab with some quite crude Photoshop. Please don't look at it for too
long!
Nikon D80, 10.5mm lens, fisheye dome, dual
Sea and Sea YS110s on low power. F16 1/100sec 200ISO
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4) Nudibranch
With quite a busy top row in the portfolio
and a lot to take in for the
viewer I though a couple of bright simple coloured images with a
black
backgrounds was need to plug the bottom corners. This nudibranch
which I think is Flabellina brownii, was from Salcombe in
2007. I thought the red matched the red on the boys sweat shirt which
helped tie in the colours. Also, it's was a chance to include a macro
image.
Nikon D80, 60mm lens, F22 1/200sec
100ISO
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5) Diver Sunburst Silhouette
I was struggling to know what to put here and
played with a couple of
images. In the end, two weeks before the competition I asked Rob
Bailey for a dive in Stoney Cove and said I had an idea for an image
that I could do with getting. I needed him as a model. We posed for
each other against the sun, swopping places and just kept going until
we both got something we were happy with. This is not the type of
image I am used to taking but have seen so mny others execute this
type of shot. I liked the idea of this in a British portfolio because
it is more the sort of shot you see in overseas images. Rob's image
of me appears in the same position in his runner-up portfolio. I am
grateful to Rob for allowing him to swop fins for the
shot.
I just could not stand his bright yellow fins
and thought they would
compromise a nice silhouette. My D80 seemed to work well on aperture
priority automatic with no exposure compensation.
Nikon D80, 10.5mm lens, fisheye dome,
available light, F8 1/640sec 200ISO
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6) Male cuckoo wrasse
Finally I picked a simple image of a male
cuckoo wrasse from the Eddystone at Plymouth in July 2006. The blue
colour seemed to compliment the blue sky in the top row and so tie in
the colours. As with the nudibranch shot, the viewer does not need to
think about this one. I can think of no other UK subject with this
kind of colour impact.
Nikon D50, 60mm lens, F11 1/250sec 200ISO,
YS90 and YS30 stobes
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