INTERVIEW
“ This one is kind of a leap of faith ... some of the photographs go back a long way , to 1986 . We were going to use one from 1972 , but it didn ’ t make the final cut . And I made a picture in Loch Ness in 1976 , with Urquhart Castle in the background and two divers in the foreground . That was my first full story for Nat Geo ; it was called The Land , the Lake and the Legend ... about the Loch Ness Monster . And clearly , I never photographed the monster ... because if I did , I ’ d be talking to you from my Gulfstream jet !”
In the introduction to Two Worlds , Doubilet says his career was made possible by the 1969 invention of the Ocean Eye , an underwater housing with a large acrylic dome . It was developed by National Geographic photographer Bates Littlehales and engineer Gomer McNeill , and its legacy endures in today ’ s housed camera systems .
“ Before there was this concept of putting a 35mm single lens reflex camera behind a dome optic in a housing , underwater photographers were struggling mightily just to make a picture ,” he says . “ Yes , we could use our beloved Rolei Marine [ a basic camera and housing popularised by Hans Hass ] to make pictures of something the size of a football , or something the size of a baseball if you had a close-up lens . But there were no sweeping panoramas , there was no ability to see the underwater world as divers saw it . This was our closet-like perspective of the entire ocean .”
The breakthrough came by placing small optical domes over Nikon ’ s groundbreaking f5.6 fisheye lens , which produced a round image . It was the birth of truly wideangle underwater photography . “ I took this concept and ran with it for the rest of my life ,” he says .
Struggle and serendipity
The photographs you see on these pages show how Doubilet elevated the notion of underwater photography as he sought stories across the blue planet . One of the photographs is a particular favourite of mine . It depicts a tiny coral island in Kimbe Bay , New Guinea surrounded by a beautiful shallow reef . Above the water a father and son are fishing from a dugout canoe , while the background is framed by the distant shadows of still active volcanoes . For me , it ’ s one of the most beautiful , complete photographs ever made .
I ask Doubilet how the picture came about – was the fishing boat a fortuitous arrival , or part of a pre-planned tableau ? “ If you ’ re working for Geographic , you can ’ t just hire a fisherman and stage something ,” Doubilet replies . “ You ’ re there as a photojournalist ,
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