In the bag
UKDIVING
PHOTO : SS
Stalked jellyfish on weed , Kimmeridge
Ryan is Principal Manufacturing engineer for an aerospace company (“ most people will have seen or been on an aeroplane with parts I ’ ve been involved with ”) while Sandra is a full time Art and Photography technician and part time lecturer in printmaking and visual communication at Weymouth College . It ’ s fair to say they both have practical and artistic skills that feed into their photography .
They met 24 years ago , when Ryan was , in his own words , “ terribly shy and awkward ”; he had been diving for some time already , while Sandra had recently learned and was looking for regular buddies when a friend passed her Ryan ’ s
details . Sandra recalls : “ We started shore diving together – I wasn ’ t a particularly good diver – and he came on a few of my club dives . We got together as a couple and pretty much spent the next 16 years diving only with each other , before becoming slightly more sociable over the last five years .”
Polycera nudibranch , Portland
In the bag
Ryan and Sandra use identical camera systems to make sharing lenses easier – Sony A7R IV cameras in Nauticam housings . For lighting , Ryan has Inon Z330 strobes and a Backscatter MF2 Snoot , plus a variety of wet lenses . Sandra uses two Backscatter miniflash2 strobes . “ We dive yearround and I find the dial easy to use with fat gloves ,” she says .
Ryan ’ s camera rig
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PHOTO : SS