After encasing his Canon EOS 5D
SR and 17mm lens in an underwater
housing, it was time for Miko to
get shooting. But in this unfamiliar,
fast-changing environment it took
some time to get used to things.
“It’s not like photographing a
diver by a shipwreck, or something,”
he says. “Everything is moving: the
whale sharks, my subject, even me!
“Estrella would dive for
between 30 seconds and 1 minute
each time, then come back up to
the surface so I could say what to do
next – ‘closer to me,’ ‘turn the other
way,’ ‘stretch your arms,’ that kind
of thing. To save me surfacing each
time in my bulky scuba gear, I wrote
down my instructions on a slate and
got my free-diving assistant to take
it up to the surface.”
Miko tried a number of
different viewpoints, taking notice
of how the light changed with
his depth and shooting angle.
“The water wasn’t that clear, so I
wanted to keep the action as close
to the camera as possible – pretty
compressed. You’re not allowed
to use flashes around the whale
sharks, so it was daylight all the
way. Fortunately, the sharks tend to
live in the top five meter s of water,
where there is still enough light to
shoot.
the mexican mermaid