Olá from Portugal!

[BobM]

Warm greetings to all. I'm an ex-pat 'merican currently living in the sunny Algarve after spending six years in the Cayman Islands (can you see a pattern here?). I was first certified in 1973, which seems odd since I'm only 35 years old. TimG seems to believe that's because I'm actually part of the Matrix and don't truly exist.

Anyway, even then, I was interested in underwater photography. I was using a Nikon F2 camera in an Ikelite housing that was rated for (I believe) 30 meters. That was "state of the art"; it was a film based system, you got a maximum of 36 exposures and it was always a surprise as to what you ended up with. Obviously technology has progressed since then both in diving and photography. 

After taking a brief break from diving (over 30 years), I decided to get back into the sport. Unfortunately, all the certification agencies with whom I was registered no longer had a record of my certifications. I believe they asked if my cert card was carved in stone...  So, I had to start over completely from scratch, both as a diver and a photographer (you can see your exposed photo in real-time?). And to cut an even longer story short, my current avocation is traveling around the world as an underwater videographer and in my spare time I try to aggravate my wife as much as possible. Oh yes, I'm also an OC and CCR instructor.

[Davide DB]

Truly a remarkable career. You are perfect for this community even though you are from the matrix 😄

 

Welcome aboard!!!

 

[BobM]

Thank you very much for the kind words. And as I mentioned to TimG earlier today, I only wish I were Keanu Reeves...

[TimG]

Great to have you with us, Keanu, I mean Bob....

 

Red pill, blue pill, eh?

 

[BobM]

Red pill, absolutely. Followed by the green pill (that Morpheus conveniently neglected to mention), the effects of which I cannot go into in this forum...