1968 – The Inspiration
Not unlike many my age, I grew up gathered around the TV with my family glued to the fascinating video images of Jacques Cousteau and his 7 year run with The Undersea World of Jaques Cousteau. We would fill sandwich baggies with pebbles for weights while trying to breath from a garden hose in my fathers pool. We eventually got our hands on those big round face masks and flippers. We lived each summer day just as Jacques. The only thing we were missing was the super cool black striped shiny silver wet-suits.
1975 – Obsession
At 9 years old watching Hooper don his giant square mask, scuba pro jets and climb into the cage I was instantaneously obsessed. The movie Jaws left quite an impression on me. I was not afraid of the water but drawn to it with unparalleled compulsion. We watched it in the theater close to 20 times contributing my hard earned allowance money to the films record breaking $470,000,000.00 success.
1992 – Getting Wet
My brother Greg called me one day about a radio commercial he had heard in San Francisco’s Bay Area offering $99 scuba certification. So, we headed down to Oakland to a little shop called Dive Quest. This shop was a crusty old place displaying various commercial equipment, right out of a movie scene. We were hooked. I vividly remember my first Open Water experience with Capt. Ray Simon USMC in his bright red dry suit at Monterey’s McAbee beach. We soon bought a small inflatable boat called an Achilles and a huge old Dodge van to pull it. We made our own homemade video housing (shown above) and soon had dozens of hours of underwater footage. We drove up and down the California coast stopping at every spot we could get the boat in the ocean and shoot video. There was no stopping us now. We then got into warm water diving, wreck diving, live aboards and the whole shebang.
1996 – Let the Shark Diving begin
In late 95 I met my beautiful wife. She hung out with us in the scuba van and while editing hours of video into our cheesy homemade productions. She quickly became certified and off we went to warm water destinations and more live aboards. In 1996 she went with me on my first shark dive with Stuart Cove’s in the Bahamas. A real ‘no cage’ fish tale that made a great story at parties for years. Stuart’s crew shot video and stills. The photo (above) was the best shot of the bunch and of course the sharks eyes and mouth are out of frame! I decided Neena would be the best dive buddy a guy could have and we were married in March 1998.
2008 – Back in Black
After a short break to have two great kids, it was time to get back in the water. I joined my local dive club, Dream Divers and picked up right where I left off with my dive training at our LDS Aquatic Dreams. I completed my PADI Rescue Cert I had began some 8 years prior and then on to Master Scuba Diver. While MSD may be the top of the recreational ladder it is often considered to be “cheesy” by those going the proffesional route to Dive Master or Instructor. I found Master Scuba Diver to be the perfect cert to freshen up my skills. In 2010 it was time to start shooting vids again with a Great White Shark cage dive at the Farallon Islands. With GoPro’s, HD handy cams, WordPress, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and Win 7 it was a whole new game, a fresh new playground for creativity
2011 – 5D or not 5D
2011 was a great year diving for me. On my birthday in April I joined the Modesto Dream Divers for thier “Dive In Earth Day” in Monterey. We had a great time cleaning up under the pier and I shot one of my favorite videos and edited it to the Beatles song “Dear Prudence“. In September I went great white shark diving at Guadalupe. This was a bucket list dive that I would recommend to anyone. Lawrence Groth, Great White Adventures, Hollywood Divers and the Solmar V crew were awesome. In November I took the family on our first warm water trip with all four of us to Kauai. In December I began studying for Tech Diving, bought a scooter, and a new video rig. Now I am learning to shoot with the Canon 5D Mark II.
2013 – Done without Mirrors
In late 2011 I bought my Canon 5D Mark II on a quest to capture ‘Cinema’ quality images. The 5D accompanied me on many practice dives here in Northern California and on several trips including a trip to North Carolina to shoot Sand Tiger sharks . I found the 5D shoots amazingly but lacks snappy auto-focus in video mode. The 5D with housing and lights is also a Goliath to travel and dive with. So in 2013 I became interested in the small, lightweight, hi-tech mirror-less DSLRs. The Sony NEX-5R’s dual mode, 99 point auto-focus with large APS-C sensor won me over. Paired with a Nauticam housing and wide angle lens I found the small, lightweight setup shoots brilliant, crisp video and stills.
