The challenge:
Caves are known to be among the most demanding environments for divers to explore, requiring specific safety procedures and higher level of awareness during all phases.
In such scenario, taking pictures (or filming) represents a relevant additional task that needs to be confined into a limited 'attention pocket'.
In facts, adding photography to the 'already packed' activities of technical diving, implies additional equipment, skills and planning. These operational additions should be designed and defined with the goal of making quicker and simpler choices in order to find a reasonable fit into the dive without running into unbalanced risks.
In facts, adding photography to the 'already packed' activities of technical diving, implies additional equipment, skills and planning. These operational additions should be designed and defined with the goal of making quicker and simpler choices in order to find a reasonable fit into the dive without running into unbalanced risks.
Problem is that, in this unique environment, most photographic evaluations also defer from usual conditions demanding for extra layers of attention and specific response.
Balancing this tension between different tasks is key to avoid polarized attention issues. Testing and training is essential to make the photographic task becoming second nature even into this one of a kind scenario where is all but easy or intuitive.
As long as the cave entrance in sight, natural light it's a strong point of control for exposure but also a good opportunity to capture the ambient in its depth.
This is why there is a significantly different approach between the first segment of the cave and the full-dark mode that follows where the natural light totally disappears.
Once the ambient light collapses into the depth, balancing light between the divers and the cave becomes more challenging.
Spacial relationships between divers, rocks and dense darkness change rapidly along the way. Image depth is built by visual separation between background and foreground image elements.
Silky waters can be a big threat for safety but when limited to small areas they can pull some sense of space with puffs..
Wide passages alternates with narrower sections of the cave providing various composition schemes to play with.
Suddenly side walls disappear in the dark leaving divers proceeding under low ceiling.
During the whole dive time, significant mental resources must be allocated in monitoring diving data and keeping safety as first priority leaving limited attention available to photographic evaluations.
Finally, during decompression there's more time to experiment.
Thanks for watching.