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 & 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 & 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 & 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 & 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 & YS30 stobes |
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BSoUP
BEST OF BRITISH COMPETITION
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