Introductions (original thread, now closed)

Hi Daniel,

welcome to Wetpixel. Nice to have another "Kraut" with us. ( We are growing stronger) ;-)

where are you from exactly?

Simon (Frankfurt/M)

Hi Simon,

I just updated my profile, so you can see I'm from Krefeld at the nice lower Rhine area, but far too far away from the beautiful and warm diving spots. So I have to test my new housing in the cold and muddy german lakes, when it is delivered.

Gruss,

Daniel

G'Day

Kristy from Cairns, Australia. I have been diving for 15years, my Dad got me into it at 11. Gave me a Nik V for my 15th birthday and a ticket for us to head of too Guam and Truk lagoon, so i have loving underwater photography since then. WOrked in the Solomons for a year and a half or so straight after school, then off to Derawan Island and Kalimantan, then joined the Australian Navy for 5 and a half years, so continued diving all around. I currently work fo a wholesale underwater camera company so i use a mixture of equipment whatever we have new at the time and we need to know how it works to give honest sales advice...

Off to Fiji with my 2 year old son and best mate for two weeks in March, looking forward to some great diving and relaxing times, rather then all work more work and you guessed it more work...

Hi,

My name is Don Kincaid. I am currently owner/captain of a 54ft. sailing catamaran named Stars & Stripes, that does history/ecology snorkel tours in Key West Fl. We teach guests how to get close to critters with their UW cameras.

I started shooting and snorkeling in the Philippines in the mid 50's and was certified in 1963. I published my first UW pic. in 1966 then became an Army filmmaker. I switched to photojournalism and began covering Formula 1 races and later studio product shoots. Most of my diving during this time was on historical shipwrecks. In 1971 I started shooting Mel Fishers treasure search and got a contract with National Geographic for that project. I also worked on projects concerning whale beachings, life in the Gulf Stream, mangrove islands and other shipwreck sites from 1554, two 1622 sites and a 1701 wreck.

My partners and I work on feature films as marine coordinators. My pictures and films have been in a number of books, magazines and documentaries. BBC , Discovery, Natl Geo, and most recently two shows on the History channel Deep Sea Detective series.

I got a D100 a year ago and have been having a blast. I have a housing and 10.5 mm lens on order. Digital has made shooting as much fun as when I first got started with a camera.

Go to Adventurekeywest.com to see some of my work.

Splash,

Don Kincaid

Welcome you two!

Kristy - you should put off your trip until May and do the Digital Shootout! Eric and I will be there.

Cheers

James

Hi, my name is Brian, I have been diving for 30 some years since I was 15. I started out with a Nikonos II and flash bulbs, then Nik V's and our moderator convinced me that digital is the best, and with good reason. I just took the plunge with a Fuji S2 and a 60mm macro and shoot with an Ikelite Substrobe 100a. I recently was in Key Largo for my fist dives with my new rig, had a connector short on me (Aquatica housing) I think due to an old o-ring on the connector but all is well now. Aquatica is very responsive with assistance and advice. It is interesting when you see your strobe start flashing without hitting the shutter, the darn thing kept firing even when the camera was not hooked in. Oh well, I got to eat a lot of lobster, drink beer and meet with my photo instructor, Larry Gates, in Key Largo. Anybody who wants some Nikonos and/or underwater photo training, Larry is great. Now my 15 year old son is underwater photo certified by Larry and is using my Nik V's.

James - Wish i could but i have a contract to meet in March...but it is only 30,000 frequent flyer points for me to fly Cairns Brisbane Nadi return....something to aim for, don't think i could get the extra time off, wouldn't mind testing out two of our new housings though before the Australian dive show. BTW - our shop bought the Calypso i asked about it is the French version, the Calypsophot - lovely condition, the grandaddy of the cameras looks very neat next to digital setups in our display cabinet.

Nice!

I have been browsing these sites for years, including other forums. What has intrigued me from day one is what people do for a real living.

I learned that one guy's main job is designing musical instruments for famous muisicians, yet his underwater work is top notch. Some are industry pros, but most of us are interesting critters ourselves. This may not be appropriaate for this forum and if so, I apologize. I just think it would be very interesting to briefly share what the main contributors to this forum do for a living.

Although I am new to Wetpixel, I have been around since for almost 30 years.

So, (not that I matter) I have been in the diving thing and have authored about 30 articles since 1995 in Skin Diver and a lot of other magazines. I have a degree in marine technology and an MBA. I have done a lot in diving, including a member of the Southern California Whale Rescue Unit and volunteered as a photographer for the Boy Scouts of America. I have done a lot of field work in the marine biology field and have done a bit of research diving and kelp transplants here in southern cal.

BUT, I don't do that for a living today. I am an engineer at Behr Paints and run their Kaizen program, which is a way to figure out how to do things more productive without making the jobs harder. So, I work in paint, and find time to participate in the diving industry in several ways.

It makes my life a lot easier knowing that I am one of the privelaged few to share in this great activity of photography and diving in general.

I don't expect all of you to do provide this much detail, as this is only to give you an idea of what I think will be an interesting thread.

Joe

Hi!

Let's reveal another critter.

I love to play around with small gadgets and technical stuff in general. Diving opened another field of possibilities to me ;-) I wrote DiveProxyCE and TravelTrakCE, software to view your (Uwatec) dive computer data on a PDA and store it for later use on your PC at home. In the meantime I've got a nice collection of dive computers (even ones, you can't buy yet) and didn't have to pay for them ;-)

Divers are a strange folk. I designed a few bits of dive wear to point it out properly too (a neoprene rubber cap for lazy dives and a bow tie if you go for a night dive to have lobsters).

I'm also member of "triton" (Austrian Society for Underwater Archaeology) and try to solve technical problems that arise during excarvations or research. As a passionate photographer I'm also documenting findings and research activities.

In contrast to diving I'm a rock climber nearly from my early beginnings. Doing both enables me to enjoy all heights and depths of life ;-)

I went to a technical school and later on studied computer science, anthropology and lots of other interesting stuff like archaeology, biology, Chinese language, a dissection course at the medical department and some more (you call that a "studium irregulare", which is an official excuse for being curious about lots of things).

For a living, I'm now developing software. I'm trouble shooter for critical software projects in our company and this most often means stress and sometimes working all night long.

Whenever I'm touching rock or feel the water closing above me, my brain is like wiped clean. There's no thought on work etc. anymore. there's just me feeling nature. That's why I'm doing it.

Helge ;-)=)

Moved the "Who are we?" thread to the "Introductions" sticky to keep all this stuff in one easy-to-find place.

I guess now that I'm a moderator I should put in a word or two about myself here. For over a year it's been one of these things that I tell myself that I shoud do in a day or two. Some of this is in the Wetpixel About page.

My entry into underwater photography was unplanned. I bought an Olympus C2020 for above water use with no idea that there's an underwater housing for it sold in Japan. They didn't sell them in the US at the time. I learned about it and the problems with strobes and pre-flash from Dave Breitigam on Wetpixels. I've since owned every generation of Olympus Cx0x0 cameras and their housings up to the 5050. Currently, I'm gathering the parts to switch to the Canon Digital Rebel.

For a day job I work as an electrical engineer. It's a constant struggle since my education background is Physics and I hardly took any EE courses in school.

I spend most winter weekends cruising down the frozen water up at the mountains near Lake Tahoe, CA. instead of diving the very slightly warmer waters off Monterery, CA.

Hey James, Eric et.all.

Thanks for allowing this thread to happen...it really spells out how diverse the work of "US" is.

Nice job.

Joe Belanger

Giles here,

I am British, and 26 years old (and a half)

I have been diving for 13 or so years now, working as a Dive Instructor on and off for the last 9ish (mainly in Cayman with Bob Sotos and Fisheye). 5 years in Grand Cayman and a few months in Australia Cairns. I also offer to work for places when I am on Vacation to get diving for free .. I hate paying for diving, although I am going to have to very soon as I am getting out of the game.

I went to college in the UK and studied Industrial management which led me to a job in purchasing. I worked for a Canaduian company who manufactured prototype equipment for Cell Phone base units and satelite units, mostly just the RF side of things. I was good at it but longed to be back in hte tropics while I was still young, so have been back in Cayman my favourite place in the whole world .. not just for diving but for life in general, if you havent been you should try it, and dont just be a dive geek, live a little too.

The job I took here was at Fisheye an underwater photography and Video School, the first here in Cayman I was mainly a boat captain and diver but obviously the love of photography soon took hold of me in the underwater world as I used to love taking photos back home especially of motorsports.

I soon started using Nikonos' but my tech sided mind which has had a digital camera for as long as I can remember (must be since olympus brought out the C2000z) so u tell me how long that is.

After having learnt mainly by self about underwater photography (as all my colleagues were too busy to give me anything other than quick hints) I soon found myself setting up the digital photo department at Fisheye, which did very well for the rest of my time there. I also wrote a very basic introduction to Underwater Digital Photography based upon the Nikonos Video's by Martin J Sutton with a digital orientation. I need to update that a little now as techniques and cameras have changed, but not working there anymore there is not much point as I dont have all that much time.

I currently drive a great big Semi Submarine which is 80ft long and 100tonnes, we take 100 people max out 6 times a day on undersea tours which are fun and educational.

I also look after 3 personal websites which always evolve very slowly and badly thanks to me always living a typical caribbean life of working hard and playing harder. Right now working as hard as I can technologically on the new YUP site www.yup.org.uk

I am leaving Cayman this year with hopes of setting up my own company with my Good friend Elliot, in the Greek Islands where scuba and photography can continue to be my hobby and I will have more time and hopefully money to travel and dive and take photos.

Im sure I have met a few people who frequent this site, Alex Mustard is a good buddy and i love seeing him when I can,I know Stephen Frink came diving with me a few times when the D1X housings from SeaCam came out, any other Rodales guys have prolly had the delight of being on my boat at some point and a few other people here I have just started spotting through floods of names flying around this site.

and thats an awefull lot about me !

Hi Folks,

Great website and forum. I'm based in Ireland and have been making pics underwater since 1987, Nik V's, Subals 801, 90 and 100. Recently had the film prised from my fingers and housed a D100. Have been amazed by results.

I'm Marjo the Finn, who loves water, the frozen powdery kind and the liquid clear stuff, but not any kind of slush. Grew up on skis a a skiresort in Finland, but later moved to the Tropics, first South East Asia for a few years and have now spent last 7 years on St. Croix USVI. Have an education in economic sciences, but am currently working as IT mngr at tropical resort. Relaxing from the puters in the weekends by sailing the carbbean sea in small 27 ft sailboat and diving the on the most beautiful reefs and most breathtaking walls to be found in the Caribbean, which are located right here on St. Croix (if you can say "on" whne you mean besides and beneath...). Have always been enjoying regular photography but only recently made investment in a "real" underwater system and have found this wetpixel site enormously useful in getting started. So thanks for upkeeing such a fantastic resource!

Hi people! Wetpixel.com is good place to learn something and to find info about UW photography that you are interested to.

I am from Serbia but diving in Montenegro and doing scuba diving from 1987. but I started to do UW photos just recently (last year) and that's why my

gear is not that sophisticated as most of you are using. Any way, since UW photography is not well known in my

country (even if we have quite developed scuba diving centres), I am trying to be well informed by visiting this forum.

I don't want to write you now about difficulties when I wanted to by some housing, strobe etc. but it was horrible, believe me.

BTW, Adriatic Sea is quite rich with the wrecks and vis is good but of course, not comparable with Red Sea or some other tropical sea.

You should visit it one day.

Hi all,

My name is John. My SO, Mary, and I are semi-retired and live aboard our sailboat Footloose II. We spend several months each year cruising the Bahamas and Caribbean. We are presently in St Maarten and will be going out on the Caribbean Explorer liveaboard dive boat next week - sort of busman's holiday for us.

On our trip last year I used a Nikon 990 in an Ikelite housing with pretty good results. This year I upgraded to a D100 in a L&M housing. The improvement in our pictures has been dramatic. I do most of the shooting and Mary processes the results with Nikon Capture and Photoshop.

We've really enjoyed all the great information available on this board. It has definitely shortened the learning curve for us. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for listening

John Durden & Mary Tripp

Hi there everyone, greetings from paradise in the middle of the Indian Ocean

My name is Karen (aka Blaze) and I consider myself to be one lucky person living on a remote coral atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Cocos (Keeling) Islands has been my home for nearly 5 years. During this time I have learnt to dive - otherwise I would have had to stay on the boat and over the past 12 months I have been dabbling with a digital camera.

My first little "darling" was strictly a point 'n shoot Canon IXUS V3, however I managed to snap some amazing photos. Dive "buddy" number 2 is an Oly C750 . It took a while to have the courage to use only manual settings.... since doing so the photos have improved in leaps and bounds.

My ever-suffering hubby runs the local dive business and after each dive I subject him to a slide show of the days dive!!!! :oops: (Thank goodness he has patience!!)

Wetpixel has certainly helped me with even the most simpliest challenges (I am digitally inept, but trying).

Thanks guys!!!

Happy fishes & sunny Cocos smiles

Blaze!!!

It has been suggested that I introduce myself to the members of this site. My name is Steve Douglas and I live in San Diego. I serve as one of the 5 core organizers of the San Diego UnderSea Film Festival, have been a dive shop owner and instructor and member of the Sheriffs Search and Recovery Dive Unit. The dive team and shop are in the past. I also write editing software reviews for the www.kenstone.net editing site for Final Cut Pro as well as other editing sites.

Two or three times a year my friends and I go on international dive trips of which I posted in the travel section on this site. Always happy to meet new divers and friends

Hope this serves as a good intro. Glad to meet you all.

Steve