FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Alexander Semenov
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen talks to Alexander Semenov, an underwater photographer based at Moscow State University's White Sea Biological Station.
This podcast is brought to you by FRAMES, a high-quality quarterly printed photography magazine. You can find out more about FRAMES at www.readframes.com.
I was looking at it for a few minutes and then uh when I went closer it just exploded his head divided on two halves. Uh he took out his six tentacles, huge tentacles they're like two thirds of the body length maybe it's really it's really big. And he started flapping his wings like a crazy and uh running in circles. Uh I absolutely wasn't sure what was then.
SPEAKER_02This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is your today's host, W. Scott Olson, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_03Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olsen, and today, folks, today we are going adventure big time. We are going to some of the most extreme limits of photography, and we are going to look at some of the coolest, coolest, most wonderful stuff out there. We're talking with Alexander Seminov. Alex is a marine biologist. He's the head of the scientific diving team at the White Sea Biological Station of Lomonosov, the Moscow State University. More than 15 years experience at sea, more than 2,500 hours of diving uh time. Alex is not old enough to have 2,500 hours of diving time. Come on, man. Um he's worked with National Geographic, with the BBC, Nature Magazine, Science Magazine, Smithsonian. He's a grantee from National Geographic, and he's producing some of the most scientifically important and breathtakingly beautiful underwater images that I have ever seen. Alex, how are you doing? Welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_04Hi, Scott. Wow, uh, what an introduction. Uh I'm I'm not maybe so good and uh I'm not making the world's most important scientific photos on every sea. But yeah, I'm trying to do it. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Well, I mean you are doing a fantastic job. And you you make a um a really big claim here that you believe that visual observation is as thoroughly scientific as a test tube or a microscope. Um you make the argument that visual research is a full-fledged scientific method. Um and so I want to get into that for a little bit. But let's do a little bit of history first. You are a marine biologist. You were and and you were a marine biologist before you really got into uh photography. I know the story of when you when you were a young kid and you and you saw your first sea angel. So so tell me the the story. So first of all, tell me that story. Um but how did marine biology get under your skin?
SPEAKER_04Um actually I never uh wanted to become a marine biologist or a biologist at all. Uh at when I was nine years old, uh I was living in a small city on a Volga River, it's uh Talyati City in Russia. And uh my father, who also was a biologist by education, he uh wasn't able to find a proper job, high-paid job as a biologist, so he decided to become a graphic designer, and uh he became one. He bought maybe first uh Apple Macintosh uh in town, bring it home, and uh I was a kid and I asked, like, uh this computer have games? Like, no, and what this computer have? I'm like, some software, graphic software, like okay. And I found uh software called Bryce, I don't remember the name. Uh it was a 3D uh landscape editing uh tool with uh some very simple rendering system with uh like spheres and cubes and everything. So my first games was uh three-dimensional graphic at nine years old. And uh in five years I became a professional in three-dimensional graphic, and when I was 14 years old, I got my first 400 bucks for a model of air conditioner for uh some commercial catalog.
SPEAKER_03Uh air condition Oh that's high adventure, man. That that that's risking it. That's yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So uh when I finished school and when I was choosing my university, uh I was like, uh so what I can do. I already had a very very well-paid job. I earned around $1,000 per month uh with my skills and like now you need to choose university. Like, okay, let it be biology faculty because it's interesting, because it's uh a lot of fun, some expedition, field practice, and my parents were also biologists, so why not to try? But when I became a student, uh I saw the amount of uh opportunities and amount of cool people uh in real biology because it's not school, it's like universities. Wow. So many ways to work, to get your diploma, uh, to choose from uh some of the coolest and most interesting people who are making science to become your supervisor. Uh so I decided to become a marine biologist, uh just for these like five years of university, not for a lifetime. But I choose to study uh brain of cephalopods, so uh I just fell in love with octoposes, but there are no octopuses in Moscow at all, and no Cs and nothing, so Moscow State University is maybe not the best place to study uh cephalopods. And uh I found one guy who was working with cephalopods in Moscow. It's uh he was a chief of laboratory in uh some uh in some other institute. I asked him to become my supervisor. He never took any students, but I think please I beg you to take me. Uh, and he paid not not he, but the institute paid uh for my expeditions to far east of Russia, where I really caught tons of uh squids, uh cut their brains, cut their hands off. Then I was asked in the airport why I had a full jar of squid heads with ice and nothing else, because I was studying uh statocysts and uh all internal uh vestibular system of squids, and you need to take it with you, all the skulls of squids. And uh my mom was not happy at all that we have a jar full of squid ice and brains uh in the fridge. So, yeah, that that was fun, and uh when I was uh graduating from the university, uh I still worked as a three-dimensional uh artist and uh I earned money that way because you know for a student it this is an absolutely great opportunity when you have uh have a chance to earn a few hundred or even a thousand bucks in a month. Uh, that's quite incredible. Uh and at the same time, I spent some of my salary to uh simultaneously go to some professional courses on uh three-dimensional software, and at this place the teachers uh who were uh with maybe the same level with me, uh they just uh promoted me to their friends who were working in commercial companies. It's uh some of the biggest uh architecture and uh uh another studio was uh on uh some special effects for cinema. Um so they recommended me to these companies, and when I were when I went when I was finishing university, uh they proposed me to become their employee. Uh and uh they proposed a salary that were bigger, that was bigger than anything I heard before. But uh for some reason um after university in Russia, you need to go to army to serve for two years and become a soldier in just just for two years, like regular army. And I decided to go to army just to be safe because my brother was hiding from army at that time and it was absolutely lame. Like, no, please, I don't want to stay in science anymore because university is not so interesting. Maybe marine biology is cool, but but no. Uh I I will be doing three-dimensional graphic, I will become an artist who are making special effects for blockbusters. Uh but at the same time, I was studying really bad, I had very bad grades, and I was not able to go uh uh to go to get my PhD in the university. And if you don't go to become a master of science or doctor of philosophy, uh you need to go to Army. So yeah, uh so I told my uh teachers that my professors in the university, so that guys, I I will go to army. Uh I don't want to be in the region anymore. And they said, maybe not, maybe you will go and get your PhD diploma, maybe, and then you decide like two or three more years will make your brain less will make you less stupid and don't waste two years for something. I'm like, okay, uh, but the only way to become a PhD was uh to even to get to exams was uh working somewhere and then get a special um I don't know how to say that. Uh it's a special way when you go uh with a prescription from your work, you don't need to show any good marks or any good uh exam results, you just go as a working professional and get your uh diploma or PhD. Uh and I went working uh for one year to White C Biological Station uh because I just asked uh politely, like, can I work maybe somewhere in the university? And I was pointed to biological station director who told me that okay, you can work there. And it turned out that when you work as a marine biologist at a marine biological station, far from um anything, uh you become free from army until you work there. So you don't need to go anywhere. Uh it's a like social important job. It's like fireman or policeman or uh doctor in some village. You don't need to go because people who work by their professional education in in some place where this education is really needed, you're like very valuable specialist. And you don't so yeah, so uh I became until 27 years, I became a person linked, connected to the station. And I said, okay.
SPEAKER_03Were you already a scuba diver at this time?
SPEAKER_04Uh yes, yes. I became a scuba diver when I was a student, uh, just to spend uh few hours under the sea at my field practice when I was maybe at the third year of university. We have every summer we have field practice, and uh at the first year uh we had a practice uh in biological station near Moscow, uh where you have fresh water, botanics, birds, insects, and all that stuff. And then you go for one month to White Sea Biological Station where you have uh marine biology, lesions, uh some other birds, and all that stuff. And when I was uh at this first year of practice, I saw a diving team of the station, and uh there were two things. Uh first thing that I was super impressed when some guys uh put on their gear, uh sit on the boat and go somewhere, and then in a few hours they return with uh some incredible animals in uh buckets, and then the whole uh group of students, like a few dozen people, uh, stay around aquarium and uh look at some few actinia or something weird like stingrays or um some blue red fish that was caught by divers. And the second thing that I uh accidentally fell in love with uh a diver elder diver. That was fun. It was just very very, very nice woman who were dying, and uh I just asked, like uh guys, what I need to do to dive with you, and they said that well you just need to become a diver, you need to get your diver license, you can do this in uh Moscow State University dive club, and uh yeah, and uh you just go here and you dive with us because we actually lack uh some people who can drive board, who can dive, because there uh there were very few divers at that time.
SPEAKER_01Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you are enjoying today's episode. The very fact that you are listening to this podcast suggests that photography means a lot to you. And if that's the case, you might want to have a look at Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. We truly believe that excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit readframes.com to find out more about our publication and use the coupon code podcast to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new frames magazine subscription. And now, back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_03Now you you are now the head or you you have been the head of the scientific team there. So you went all the way up the ladder there.
SPEAKER_04Oh yes, uh for 12 years now, uh, I think. So I became uh I became a chief of uh diving team quite fast. Uh because before me, all the people who were uh serving as a head of diving, they had their own scientific projects. So you have your main work, and at the same time, you need to manage all the underwater operations, all the requests, uh you need to manage equipment, repair all that stuff, uh, and do a lot of things actually. Uh so when I became uh employee at the station, uh I had nothing. So I I wasn't a scientist, I was just an employee of the station, I was like assistant diver, and uh in the first two years uh I became quite I I can say I can I became experienced in just to fill season now. Uh but I was super motivated because uh underwater world is it's incredible, it's like parallel universe. And uh I used every single chance to dive, and uh of course, uh director of a station saw it, and he proposed to to get a new position.
SPEAKER_03I I w I want to hear more about that, and I especially want to hear how the camera came into your life doing all this. But but let's go back in time a bit because on and I mean you've been written up by the BBC, and and one of the things, one of the stories you tell there um is where that when you were a young schoolboy uh coming upon a sea angel, but but not just the thing itself. You you came upon one in in in a particular situation. So tell me that story.
SPEAKER_04Uh um yeah, before university, I was uh I spent last four years uh in quite good school in Moscow, uh because we moved from uh this small city uh on Volga to Moscow. So my parents moved actually uh for me and my brother to get an education, and it went well. I was in this school, it was uh maybe third uh most uh powerful school in Moscow, so it's really top-rated with uh very good teachers with uh very high level of uh education, school education. So uh uh when I moved to this school from the common regular middle school, I get uh five five the worst marks uh in my life. Um and I finished school. Uh I I don't know what mark system you have. Uh it's like A, D, C, F, all that. Yep, yep. So uh the worst is F, yes.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_04Well, I I get five F in the first month, and uh before that I had only A grades just in regular school. So in yeah, so imagine you move to a new school and you became uh like just a loser. You don't know anything. The program is so hard that you need to I don't know, to be a genius to get it all. But the level of the school is the same as you have in the university in the first two years. So in the university, I learned nothing new. Uh and uh we also had field practice before, so uh there is a yeah, a little nuance before going to biological faculty of Moscow State University. I went to biology class with a very high level of biology. So I was uh I wasn't studying good at all, but uh there we had field practice, and the White Sea uh was one of them. And after eighth, uh eighth, eighth grade, uh we went to field practice with uh my class. Uh it's a freshwater lake somewhere in uh Twir region, it's uh not so far from Moscow, but you need to drive for five hours maybe. And uh when this field practice was over, uh I was so impressed uh that you can live in the field. You're a kid, but you have so many uh adult things, you need to cook food for the whole team, you need to chop trees, you need to make fire, you need to study, you need to live in a camp. And uh it was like the first time in my life. So I asked uh my uh main teacher, who is uh head of biological department in that school, uh, that please can you take me to the next practice right away? That is for uh like next year uh class uh for nine graders. And he told me that, like, no, Alex, next year maybe like please, I have nothing to do in Moscow in summertime, so please take me to the White Sea. And he took me with the next class because there were uh not so many boys, and when you go to a field practice uh somewhere to the place like the White Sea, you need any working hands you have, especially uh for boys, because yeah, you always carry wood, you need to carry boats and all that stuff. So he took me. And uh at the White Sea I was introduced to white knights, knight rainbows, uh all sorts of uh marine creatures because you catch with animals on a low tide uh with a special net, and uh it was really fun. Um I wasn't uh impressed by the amazing wiredness and beautifulness of these animals, but uh the whole experience uh camping, white nights for elder older friends, uh building of a camp at some new place. Uh all these creatures, it was all incredible. Uh and of course, when you're uh running around uh and try to get every single uh experience and remember it, one of that was Sea Angel, actually. And this is a moment that I remember clearly, really clearly, or even now, and but it was like 23, 24, 25 years ago. I don't remember. I don't remember how many years ago it was, but I remember the moment. Um you need to carry water uh from the tiny spring, uh, and your camp is in the hill. So you need to take two buckets of 10 liters each, go downstairs. Uh it's like 15-minute walk, and then you walk uh back uphill with 20 kilograms of water. Uh and uh the road on the hill goes near the sea, so you just look in the water all the time and just not to fall there. And uh I was carrying this water uh back to the camp, and I saw some creature, some something in the water, because water in the White Sea sometimes is so calm, it looks like a mirror, so it's and it's dark. At the same time, it's dark, so it's not uh reflecting water. You always see through, um but it's absolutely flat, and uh you sometimes see uh seafloor. So if something swims there, you see it. And from the hill, like from maybe five or even more meters height, I saw something small was moving in the water. Uh I put these buckets and went down, and I saw a sea angel swimming. And uh you look at the and it was first time we haven't caught any single sea angel before uh on the lessons during the practice, so it was like my personal uh my my small small personal animal that I saw for the first time by myself. I can't express how it was hunting.
SPEAKER_03You see you say it was but you also caught it hunting, yes.
SPEAKER_04Yes, uh since uh I I was looking at it for a few minutes and then uh when I went closer, it just exploded his head divided on two halves. Uh he took out his six tentacles, huge tentacles, they're like two-thirds of the body length, maybe it's really it's really big. And he started flapping his wings like a crazy and uh running in circles. Uh, I absolutely wasn't sure what was that because uh for me it was some strange scene that I was experiencing without any explanation what's going on, and you don't see sea butterflies because they are small, black, and uh to see them you you need to be very very close to the water or better underwater. So, yeah, it was just sea angel uh doing wired things uh solo without any uh explanation from his site, and I uh I poured one bucket, uh I caught with sea angel, and I took him uh with all the seawater to the camp to show uh to all the people around. Yeah, I I also I I remember I also was a hero of the day because I found Sea Angel and caught him.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That's probably your first day teaching as a marine biologist, too. You got to be the lecturer.
SPEAKER_04Maybe. No, no, no. I actually I I I'm surprised how it all turned out because uh in school I was a punk uh without any uh wish to get uh proper education with really really bad marks, and I finished school with I don't need to show it now to anyone because it will kill any motivation in any school kid, because I'm quite a successful guy with amazing, interesting life full of adventures, and my school life is absolutely you know that that that that that is not an unusual story for photographers, actually.
SPEAKER_03Um, but okay, fast forward now that let's go back into the future of you know 15-20 years. You're you're diving, you're at the research station. Where does the camera come into all of this?
SPEAKER_04At one moment, uh when I uh my father was a photographer as well, so you know when you're a designer, uh you when you do some uh catalogs, you sometimes need to shoot uh your models of some tables, chairs, people sometimes, uh to put them in uh these brochures and everywhere else in your designs. Uh so he had a camera, and when I was in the last when when I was in the university for my last year, uh he got himself a new camera and he gave me his old camera. And I started photography. And this was uh some moment when I realized that all my at that moment, uh maybe 12 years of experience in uh with uh 3D graphics uh was useless because you can press the button and you get the picture immediately. You know, in the software you need to spend like a week to get a photorealistic result at that time, and here you press the button, and that's it. Like uh hmm. So, why I need to try to make a model of human or of some animal when I can just shoot it with a camera. So it was a bit of enlightenment uh for me. And uh I liked photography very much. Uh at the last year university, I shoot portraits of all my friends, I was shooting night scenes in HDR, I was studying Photoshop, and it was all quite useful uh in uh three-dimensional graphics as well, because you can shoot some textures, you can work with light, you can shoot with uh mirror balls to make uh special lighting for like real life lighting for uh rendering and all that stuff. So I decided that I will combine photography with uh three-dimensional and it will work. And when I uh went to the station for the first year, I took this camera, I took uh macro lens, and uh when I was diving, I saw that like what if I will collect animals uh in the sea, put them in a pet traditional lab, and make some photos uh without any strobes, without any lighting, without proper tripod. Uh it was absolute mess because uh at that time we had no internet at the station. I was not able to check functions of uh camera, I had no idea how to shoot macro, so it was all try and fail, try and fail again. Um but I spent three months uh of summer season, and in the end I've got like 20 nice shots of uh really strange underwater creatures. And uh, since we had no working space at the station for newcomers, uh, because uh at that moment the station was not in the best shape. Um some of the rooms were uh not usable, uh some are some were fluted with mold all around. Uh so I was working uh in the director's room, and every time when the director came in at daytime, night time, anytime, he saw me with a camera trying to shoot some Nudie Brank or Polyheadworm or something else. And uh I was not able to touch underwater camera of uh older divers because we had one very, very valuable underwater camera with a housing that they bought uh somehow on the money of sponsor give them, so not from university, but very precious underwater camera for uh ugliest mirrorless Sony camera. Uh but it was like the one and only underwater imaging device they had. In the end of the season, they flooded the housing and the camera were was killed. So so yeah. Um I wasn't really disappointed because I hated this camera. Uh, it will it was worse than uh any maybe consumer legal DSLR of that time.
SPEAKER_03Right, right.
SPEAKER_04And uh I asked director, like, okay, what we're gonna do. Uh I will be happy to shoot underwater, maybe, and you know this camera is fluted, so what to do now? And uh at the same time we discussed the making of new book, it's like Atlas of uh Flora and Fauna of the White Sea. Illustrated book with like 300 species, and for sure, for 300 species you need to have a lot of photos. So we decided to give it a try, and director asked me if I want to shoot underwater if we have a new camera. And I think sure, of course I want. And uh just because he saw my uh attempts to make nice nice pictures, and uh actually he was impressed by a few that I made uh in his room, in his laboratory, and uh he told me that okay, you choose a camera, you choose a housing, you give me a list of what you need, tell me how much it costs, and we will try to buy it.
SPEAKER_03Uh imagine how I was gonna say that I I I already know that you're using Hasselblood in phase one in your career. So is this where this comes in?
SPEAKER_04Uh no, it was Canon 400D. Uh you remember this camera? Uh Canon D. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a plastic piece of shit. Uh with uh some glass uh plastic lenses. I don't remember. It was uh entry level sigma macro and something else. Ah, and Canon MP Yeah, 65 millimeters. That was an incredible one. The lens that was two times heavier than the camera itself. And I was diving with it. So yeah, uh, I bought uh my first housing, it was a German-made uh Clux. Cia Lux, yes. Uh very weird, actually, housing. It was a strange system, but it was cheap. And uh next season I was really eager to dive and shoot. Uh and uh when I get the walls set up in my hands, I took the camera, I put all the lenses, all the strobe, lenses, arms, and cords together. I make some test shots on the surface, then I went diving, and I came back with nothing, absolutely, because it was so harder than shooting on the surface that you can't even focus on an object because it just flows away, and uh focusing underwater is really not that easy at all. Uh you need to look in the uh long uh tube viewfinder, and in this tube viewfinder it's like looking in the looking glass without a glass. Uh I I don't know how to say that.
SPEAKER_03You have a very small let's let's pause there for a second because the the technical aspect of shooting underwater is tremendously difficult. I mean, not only do you have the diving technical stuff, you know, you know, taking care of yourself and your air and your depth and all that kind of stuff, you go underwater and all the rules, I mean the colors aren't the same, the white balance isn't the same, exposure, nothing is the same underwater. Oh, yeah. And you uh and and and you have problems with definition. You know, I I look at some of the films that you've made, which are clearly all you know, daytime films, and even there you've you've done a magnificent job of sort of cleaning up um the environment, the water. But your your most thrilling shots all appear to be uh night shots, which I mean man, you're you're under ice, you're in cold water, you're at night. You you've got every possible thing going wrong, and then you gotta figure out how to take a picture. So how in the world do you prepare? What are the requirements uh for taking and you know, by the way, the jellyfish don't just wait for you, you gotta go find them once you're in there. How do you do it? Uh actually now it's easy.
SPEAKER_04Oh, thanks. So I I don't know what was hard. Uh all the preparation, all the stuff that you need to do, it's all uh technical things that you really get used to. So you just need to put the light properly. You need to good you to use a good viewfinder that magnifies uh your uh picture in the viewfinder. So there are viewfinders with magnification, and uh when you shoot underwater, the hardest thing is to focus. Uh a lot of photographers actually use after focus uh cameras, and modern after focus and Canon or Sony is incredible, and uh they even laugh at me like you're still shooting with manual. I said, uh yeah, I got used to it. Uh but when you're shooting with uh manual focus, uh you need to move uh only your camera back and forth. And uh you know this micro movements, you put a finger on a shutter uh button, you half press it so you're ready to shoot anytime, and then you can by moving your camera, you can focus on the front, middle, or back of the eyes of a shrimp. So with magnifying viewfinder, with these uh surgical micro movements, uh you can take your focal plane and focus points just wherever you want. And this is incredible because sometimes you see scenes uh when uh five leeches with a super fat bellies lay eggs on a poor shrimp that is almost dying, and you need to focus not on the suffering of a shrimp, but you need to focus on the uh mouth of the leech or on the egg, and you can do it only by moving the camera manually. So uh when you get used to it, you can hold the jellyfish in one hand, um, with the same hand you try to push the dome a bit to reveal uh crustacean parasite inside the jellyfish, and with the second hand you put the camera and the housing on your elbow of the hand holding the jellyfish to make it stable, and then move it a bit uh to focus on the eyes of this parasite inside the jellyfish that is floating in the middle of plankton on the water column, and uh it's like absolutely normal situation for me now.
SPEAKER_03Oh, you you make it sound like that this is easy, and everything you're describing is actually extraordinary. I gotta ask about one of my favorite pictures of yours, and this is from the Stony World Photograph uh awards. Um I cannot tell you what the main animal is, um, but it it it appears to be with some kind of a leg or an arm holding a smaller jellyfish that is absolutely transparent. Um, and inside that is is a white cocoon-looking kind of structure. Do you know which image I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_04Uh when you have uh some planet-like uh creature holding with a tentacle a smaller jellyfish. Yes. Ah, yeah, sure. Uh it's a tsanae capillata, it's a lion's main jellyfish hunting on uh tiny literazone jellyfish uh called Sapsia.
SPEAKER_03Tell tell me the story of taking this image and and from you know seeing it through post-processing.
SPEAKER_04This is uh not uh not a big story. Uh actually it pull tons of good shots are just lucky uh scenes that you see under water. Uh you just fly around uh in the water column and looking for animals. Uh you see a lot of animals, um usually when you know how how how how deep are you normally? Uh up to 30 meters. Not deeper.
SPEAKER_03Not a lot. Well, 30 meters. Yeah. So okay, then you then you still got some decompression time to build in um to what you're doing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, sure. But uh I prefer to be like first 15 uh when I shoot in plankton. So uh being in a water column at the 25 or 30 meters is not good because you uh usually change death uh quite fast when you're chasing some animals and when you're already deep. Uh I experienced it at night uh in Italy when we were shooting at night at the Mediterranean. Uh when you chase some creature and you're like at 35, and like uh your computer starts screaming at you. Uh so it's not cool. And usually I shoot all the jellies and everything else uh in the first 10, 12, 15 meters, and usually all the plankton is uh closer to the surface. That's normal situation.
SPEAKER_03Uh okay. Now for this particular shot, did you have big strobes with you? Or how did you manage the lighting?
SPEAKER_04Uh always. Uh no, you always have huge strobes. And uh you're you you were telling uh about night shots. Uh most of shots are not night. Uh when you see dark background, uh sometimes it's just uh very high shutter speed. Uh with uh Nikon uh 850 it's one uh 200 1 to 250 seconds shutter, so it's uh like fastest synchronization that you have in uh DSLR at that time. And now with Hasselblatt, I can shoot uh for one of 2000. So you can turn uh day to night uh easily with the strokes. So you just decide uh if you want to have black background and isolate your object, or you want to make a shot with uh some background nice, like green or blue, or with rays of sun. So some might I now have some macro shots with the sun rays, and like wow, why haven't tried this before? So you just choose what to do. And uh strobes are absolutely necessary under the sea because uh even on macro distance uh you lose color and you lose light, uh some parts of the spectrum when you go deeper. So you can shoot maybe half of a meter under the surface, you will still have proper colors. But if you go like two, three, five, ten meters, uh you need to reveal colors with a uh with the strokes with some artificial light that will have all the all the spectrum of white light.
SPEAKER_03Well, I want to get to color correction in post-production in just a second, but one other of the images, again, this is from the Sony World Photograph Collection, that I just find breathtaking almost looks black and white. It's it's a dome-topped jellyfish of some sort. It has white, lacy interiors, um, some kind of of a white center thing underneath the rest of its arms. Do you know which image I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_04I don't remember. But uh some creatures don't have any coloration. Um that's normal. So some creatures are colorful, some are red, that is actually invisible underwater, and some are colorless.
SPEAKER_03Okay, t tell me the story of this image.
SPEAKER_04Uh this jellyfish, uh, it's actually yeah, almost transparent thing. They you have all only these uh white spirals and uh mouth parts visible uh in the water. And this was shot uh in the Mediterranean Sea, as I remember. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But how how do you get how do you get such wonderful definition? I mean it's not just megapixels. How do you you know underwater at whatever depth get this kind of exactness?
SPEAKER_04There is a little trick. Uh you need to have the less possible distance uh in the water to get the most crisp and clear details of your object uh you need to minimize the layer of water between the object and your lens. So uh when you shoot through the water the water has all these dissolved particles uh all the super tiny stuff and big stuff and plankton and huge flakes of organic or non-organic matter and uh it always messes with uh clarity with the micro details uh with everything with lighting with color so shooting underwater is actually fighting with all this uh matter if you have a crystal clear water and you have visibility like 40 meters or maybe even 60 meters uh it's like shooting on air it will be the same on the surface but uh usually you don't have this perfect condition so you need to fight with uh visibility in the water and uh I do next thing I take macro lens uh and I put extension ring on the port so I'm making a layer of air inside the lens port usually you have these charts uh from the companies who make uh underwater housing they have port charts and uh everyone thinks that if you put the lens uh of the front lens of the lens close to the front glass of the port uh it will be the best solution because uh you need when you know when you make lenses uh the manufacturers always try to get the perfect optical schem and adding some element in front of it will make uh your uh image worse not perfect not as it was designed and it's really so so uh with when you're moving front glass of uh port uh further and further from the front lens you get uh some artifacts sometimes sometimes not it depends on uh you you need to uh find compromise between uh digitalization between thickness of this water layer in front of the glass and the air and the distance to the front lens uh of the camera so this is a field to experiment and find the perfect uh way when it will work just as you want and with hustle blood uh when I got it um I was absolutely terrified because I immediately understood that why no one shoots macro with medium format underwater the working distance uh minimal focusing distance is so big that in any water conditions you lose all this incredible utilization of high frame or of high resolution sensor yes really yes you get blurry picture worse than I have uh with uh Nikon and I spent all the grant money I spent 7000 euros on the housing uh I waited for the wall set up for a few months and uh at the first dive I was sweating with a cold sweet and like no what have I done but uh immediately after that I realized that okay uh I just need to make the layer of water thinner so I took a ruler I I dived with a ruler I found the closest uh focus uh how far the object is uh from the front lens of the glass port then I just added few extension rings on the port I've got a huge trunk on the housing so it's like I added maybe 40 centimeters of air so really really a lot this is a funniest underwater setup you will ever see because it's like uh telephoto lens uh to go underwater but actually inside you have if you look inside you need to make to take a torch and just light the inside of the housing uh from the glass to find where is the lens it's really far away but uh I made it you you you have you have a picture on your Facebook page of you holding a housing is it is this the setup that I'm looking at?
SPEAKER_03Yeah maybe maybe maybe I'm staging on it actually you see this huge trunk so yeah that's it okay man I again I'm looking at your Facebook page and you have a story from just a couple days ago almost an emergency call to the ocean uh because this blue mass was coming in um tell me that story uh which one actually was it I don't know how to pronounce it but Villeli um it's not mine it's just a report you're good at this now you you've got the grants you've got the reputation what but you say over and over and over you know that we haven't discovered thousands of millions or not thousands of millions but we have not discovered millions of species that we know are down there yet.
SPEAKER_04What still calls you back to what is essentially dangerous diving difficult photography um what pulls you back out every morning you know uh what am I doing with my life what's the question yes no actually uh I have quite a lot of interesting activities going on and uh with diving with uh marine biology I'm uh a bit back in science now um we're also building our new biological station on far east of Russia on Sahelin Island and I'm um director of this thing so I'm building my station my biological station my own uh this is incredible um absolutely I still don't believe it there are so many stories under the sea that you can tell there are so many people uh super motivated to work uh on the topics of biodiversity visual science everything else and somehow we always uh find each other and work together on absolutely exciting projects and uh there are many people who are volunteering at uh the station where I work now as a head of diving and uh every summer I have a small but super excited and amazing team of uh guys who are learning from me from uh my colleagues uh who are using all that uh not million dollar equipment but expensive for them that they have have no chance to use in any other case so I just give them the cameras like yeah yeah this this is yeah take it and go shoot uh and then I even tell them how to make money with it so very oh very cool and it is is this what aquatilis is uh no aquatilis was uh my uh dream project uh when I was young and naive uh I decided to widen horizons of uh my work and uh end up with uh around the world expedition on a sailing yacht uh on uh some world most interesting places uh we made I gathered a super nice team of uh few people around 10 or 12 people we had um we've got crowdfunding companion we connected uh with scientists all around the world we discovered all the points of interest that in points of interest on the route uh we had a yacht we had a captain uh so we only lack uh some funding and uh for that we made a crowdfunding campaign and in Russia it was a huge success uh I've gotten all newspapers in all media uh but in Russia we gathered only that amount of money to start a proper campaign on Indiegogo uh worldwide campaign with the help of all the scientists all around and with the help of uh super talented graphic designers who had an amazing brand amazing project uh but the reality is uh not so uh dreamlike and uh as a biologist aspiring biologist and underwater photographer you know nothing about managing uh big projects like around the world expedition and uh you don't know how to build uh proper chain of command proper networks and everything else it was like okay I have a dream let's make it true uh we just haven't succeeded in fundraising and uh it's a really really good thing because when we had when we started to have problems with uh money Captain told me that I need to pay him or he will take his yacht and just go away and uh I own him the his salary every month on that date or he's not working with us and uh it's like okay if Captain behave himself like that for now maybe in three years of around the world expedition and we will have some problems. So yeah um we stopped the project uh as a sailing expedition but we already told everyone that we will show underwater world so I scratched my head and so like what we have so we don't have sailing yacht and uh guys who took sailing courses from my team told me that sailing yacht is cool sailing is amazing and uh my sister who was uh with me in my team now uh runs a sailing company in Netherlands uh adventure company with uh sailing rentals and everything they told me that you can make an adventure but proper scientific work with the filming and diving on a sailing yacht is almost impossible it's really really hard so I decided that okay we have biological station uh we have some equipment uh we announced that we will show underwater world to all the curious people around it was a like a motto of uh Aquatilus expedition project uh that we will reveal the unseen world of oceans of world oceans and uh show you the most amazing underwater life and and you have I'm I I'm looking at a couple of the short films you've got on on the Facebook page here. This is mesmerizing this is brilliant stuff yeah so uh actually you don't need sail an expedition you just need to show that stuff that you already have and just uh focus on uh some really amazing stories that are unique and that are not filmed by anyone else and just do your work so it's just working on really amazing stories. Absolutely yeah and we made aquatiless uh I was alone with photocamera with aquatiless uh we became a team with video cameras that's the difference I am a deep fan absolute deep fan of your work I look at this and and I'm humbled and mesmerized and and really proud that this kind of work's going on in the world thank you very much this has been a fantastic conversation oh look at on Lenauer we we could we could talk for another three I'm sure yeah I I actually need another three uh I just started frames because excellent photography belongs on paper visit us at w dot readframes dot com