Buddy team work

Hello,

I see lots about how to take good underwater photos here but not too much about being a good diver whilst taking photos. 

My buddy and I only dive together, and she's the photographer. Do you typically find that you offload "normal" diving tasks to your buddy (buoyancy/depth management, general surroundings, gas management, timings/NDLs) or do you still take all that on whilst photographing? I appreciate no one is responsible for your safety but you, but do you share tasks to make your lives easier?

Alternatively, any tips for the buddy of the photographer?

Welcome to Wetpixel, Mike!

LOL, this is an excellent question.

I suspect a good few of us who are the ones holding the camera are diving with someone else who is muttering under his/her breath, "how much longer on this damn spot", "does he/she ever look at his/her dive computer", "I'm cold/bored/unappreciated:.....

... and that's just the underwater bit. Topside: "do I really have to share my baggage allowance", "no, I'm not carrying that f***ing 230 domeport", "no officer, they're his/her cameras, yes, I'm sorry".

I suspect a lot depends on how familiar the divers are with the site. In Sint Maarten here we've dived some of the sites very many times so it's more: hop-in, swim around and then surface. 

When it's a new site, we do agree a lot more about who leads, who follows,  who might deploy an SMB if necessary etc etc. But, yeah, at various stages my buddy will make that gesture (not in the PADI manual), " do you even know I'm on this dive with you?".

Life eh? 

Tips for the buddy of an u/w photographer? Tempting to say "don't do it". 

Hah thanks. I gave up my baggage allowance rights a long time ago... 

I guess I'll have to make sure my patience is tip-top!

Ta

1 hour ago, mcyoung said:

Do you typically find that you offload "normal" diving tasks to your buddy (buoyancy/depth management, general surroundings, gas management, timings/NDLs) or do you still take all that on whilst photographing?

Hell no. I am a diver first, and a photographer second. My primary buddy, and model, is my wife. I'm more experienced by several orders of magnitude (not to say she isn't a competent diver), but I tend to set the "pace" of the dive.

On deeper tech dives, my buddy on those is more self reliant... When you're messing about on a sub-200 foot dive, everyone needs to be responsible for their own actions.

3 hours ago, mcyoung said:

Do you typically find that you offload "normal" diving tasks to your buddy (buoyancy/depth management, general surroundings, gas management, timings/NDLs) or do you still take all that on whilst photographing? I appreciate no one is responsible for your safety but you, but do you share tasks to make your lives easier?

Absolutely not!!

I am responsible for my safety; I check my gas, my kit, my camera, and finally my buddy. I will not take my camera on my first dive at a new location (diving a familiar site for the first time at night is a new location to me).

I always will have a chat with my dive buddy (as they are often newer divers) about the dive plan.  Many times they don't even realize we have completed our dive plan and brief, I point that out to them as it doesn't have to be a super formal or lengthy.  Things like; What tank are you using?, Turn pressure based on the teams tank size, Max depth for this dive, Max time underwater (from the time our head goes underwater to the time our head comes back above water including safety stop or deep stops or deco stops if doing them).

Once we have agreed on the limits of the dive I write them on my wrist slate:

Turn Pressure:_______

Turn Time:_______

Max Depth:______

Max Time:_______

Some pretty defininte answers there.

Useful checklist practice - I think I'll have to start incorporating that. Pretty sure we'd usually include a line about when to admit we're lost and turn around, too...

Ta!

My short answer is no, i absolutely do not offload any of the tasks you mentioned: buoyancy/depth management, general surroundings, gas management, timings/NDLs.  

As others have said, if you are diving familiar territory, its pretty easy to manage all of that and spend much of your attention on photography.

Since my wife died in 2017 I've not had a dive buddy.  I typically try to go to a resort when no other divers are there and pair up with the dive master.

When I was diving with my late wife, we were both into photography, and so neither was a particularly good dive buddy to the other.

That said, if I were diving with a non-photographer diver, I would have several things I would *like* for that diver to do for me:

1. Find subjects.   Obviously!   Always useful to have another spotter.

2. Be a good subject in a wide-angle scene.   Many wide angle shots benefit from having a diver in them, in the right place, and without bubbles obscuring their face, at least.   A so-classic-it-is-cliche shot is that of a diver in the background with a dive light centered in their shadow pointing toward the photographer.

3. Actually help get the shot.  In particular it would seem to be (I haven't tried this yet) easier to have a dive buddy holding and aiming a snooted strobe on a subject.   Assuming you can trigger it, with a long-enough fiber cable, it could be far less troublesome that trying to sneak up on a fish with a strobe mounted on an arm in front of camera.

4. Watch out for danger while you are absorbed in shooting.

Hi Mcyoung,

In our early years of underwater photography, my wife Lena and I were sharing 1 camera/housing setup, and every second dive, I was the "photo assistant".

Like others said, we didn't delegate our safety to the other half, but we certainly helped each other out in a number of ways, and even nowadays, we sometimes go diving with a single housing, knowing the other will be photo assistant, which is good fun:

• Looking for subjects to photograph for the photographer: on a muck dive few days back there was so much to see, but she was busy on a subject so I just stuck my pointer stick in the sand near her "N+1 subject" and went looking for N+2
• Carrying extra gear/accessories (maybe not as fun as the rest...)
• Helping with lighting a subject (e.g. snooting, backlighting, setting up a remote light on a tripod)
• Posing as a model: even if my wife doesn't think to ask, when she's shooting wide-angle I will sometimes pop-by, position myself where I suspect it will look good, and she will give me a nod if she's happy for me to hold position, or signal to do something else, or get the hell out of her photo

Aside from that, in the rare occasion that we have to follow a group during a dive (e.g. in Sipadan few years back, we weren't allowed to dive on our own, had to follow 1 guide + 4 other divers), we often ended-up being last to photograph a subject, just to have bit more time, and then the group would move on. In this scenario, the non-photographer amongst us was swimming back & forth between the group and the photographer to make sure he/she wouldn't get lost. When the group was getting too far, it was time to give a nudge, hey photo time is over.

But this isn't really about safety, more avoiding the inconvenience to get lost and have to ascend/cut the dive short.

This is a cool topic!
I find that I am most productive photographically when I am diving with other photographers. This typically means that there are no conflicting dive goals, but equally each individual is responsible for their own safety, dive planning, decisions etc.

It should be stressed that I don't see this as "solo diving" as I am diving as a part of a loose group. In the event of their being a problem, there are still  people around to assist. It does require situational awareness as each individual needs to be aware of where others are, and their status. This is not always easy.

In an environment where this could be dangerous (e.g. caves), I either shoot with a photographer one at a time or hire a guide. Frequently, they can double as a model, which adds to potential creative opportunities. Interestingly, in dark places (caves) lights are a really easy and efficient way of keeping track of where the team is...

These are great tips, thank you all! 

Need a new hand signal for "get out of my shot now, or else"!

Hopefully other photographically challenged divers can also pick up on these to help their buddies

44 minutes ago, mcyoung said:

Need a new hand signal for "get out of my shot now, or else"!

Ohhh, I think you'll find that one easy.... 

Ohhh, I think you'll find that one easy....