Scheduled next year: October 4 - 11, 2008
The Week in Review by Stephen Frink
It was an incongruous prelude to a very innovative concept. I had been invited to join a fashion shoot crew in Nassau, essentially to shoot underwater backgrounds that were to be used as environments where supermodels would be situated, all wearing Rolex watches. A different supermodel was flown in each day, and ace fashion shooter Russell James photographed them topside, before a blue-screen in a ballroom at the Atlantis Resort, all wearing diaphanous gowns, gorgeous watches, and a fan blowing their hair as if they might be underwater in current. Some had excellent water skills, and they would actually be photographed in the ocean, but others had aquatic skill sets that restricted them to pool or studio only. For those, Photoshop simulations could place them 20 feet underwater far more efficiently than a tank and regulator could have done that day.
It was a fascinating project that ultimately ran big in French Vogue and on the Rolex website, but I digress. It was also one of maybe a dozen commercial photo shoots I'd done with Stuart and Michelle Cove at Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas over the years. Located off the southwest end of New Providence Island, these are the go-to guys when big budgets are at stake for advertising photography, marine life documentaries, and film production. Predictably, this and all my previous projects here operated with precision, the photo-ops being delivered professionally and reliably.
While this particular shoot did not involve sharks, I think Lloyd's of London had decided sharks and supermodels in gowns swimming together wasn't a great idea, I knew from other projects for dive clients that consistent shark action, up close and extraordinarily personal, was the specialty of the house.
Between takes on the Rolex shoot Stuart and I began to forge the concept of Shark Shootout. We asked ourselves, what if we took all the elements of a commercial photo shoot, not unlike we were doing right then, and not unlike Stuart had been doing for years with Hollywood film productions like Flipper, Thunderball, Cocoon, and Into The Blue? What if we created an annual event whereby enthusiastic amateur photographers were thrust into the same kind of extreme photo opportunities that they delivered to the Hollywood heavyweights? What if we offered this just once a year, made it limited participation to maximize access to the sweet spot that shooters need to photograph sharks, and what if throw massive infrastructure at the event (including multiple shark wranglers, dedicated dive boats, and LOTS of bait)? With all that in place then we'd have me come in to teach shark photography and digital workflow, and have an Adobe Photoshop expert on location to teach post-processing. With those "what-ifs" becoming our operational parameters, Shark Shootout was born. Sponsored by Scuba Diving Magazine, and offering equipment prizes for photographic excellence by Scubapro, Storm cases, and Henderson Aquatics, this has morphed into the world's premiere shark imaging event.
Of course, it all helped to have a location blessed by consistently clear water swept in from the vertical walls of the Tongue of the Ocean, and a leeward orientation that protected the dive sites reefs from the most common prevailing wind patterns so we could expect calm conditions most days. The natural advantages of the underwater experience have been significantly enhanced over the years by the addition of dozens of shipwrecks, intentional and otherwise, and the genius of the Stuart Cove shark wranglers in terms of putting the sharks exactly where a shooter needs them ... 6 inches in front of the dome. "Carcharhinus perezi R us" could be their motto.
History of New Providence in International Film Community
New Providence had long been recognized as the place Hollywood liked to come to film their underwater sequences, mostly because of the clear water and easy air access, but even in the very early years of underwater filmmaking New Providence was known as a good place to find sharks. John Ernest Williamson actually chummed a shark to the front of the camera as long ago as 1915. His script for "Thirty Leagues Beneath the Sea" called for the diver to fight a shark to the death, killing the shark with a knife in the process. Unable to find "talent" to perform the stunt, Williamson put the camera on an underwater tripod and rolled film while he stabbed the shark himself.
More recently, by 1965 the producers of the James Bond films came to realize the southwest end of New Providence was the best place to go for reliable sharks, even though at the time no one really knew how for sure dangerous these sharks might actually be. In the underwater scenes for Thunderball, there are several underwater scenes when Sean Connery is scripted to encounter sharks, and the preproduction meetings called for clear plastic panels to be in place to protect him during close-ups. However, apparently no one sent the memo to the sharks, and as the plastic panels were only 3 feet high, the sharks simply swam over and around the barricades. So, when Connery is "emoting" fear during the pool fight in Lago's mansion, director Terrance Young contends it was genuine terror. All the better on camera. To learn more about the long tradition of underwater filmmaking on New Providence, and Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas significant contributions, visit www.underwaterhollywood.com.
Knowing what we now know about diving with sharks, going back to watch Thunderball again is kind of camp, but this really broke new ground in the 1960s in terms of underwater filmmaking, and does speak to how very "sharky" southwest New Providence was at the time. Incredibly, in an era where our shark populations are threatened worldwide, they may be even more plentiful today off New Providence today.
To a great extent, this impressive shark population is directly attributable to Stuart Cove and his staff of dedicated shark enthusiasts. In the 1980s, really just about the time shark diving was just getting popular, a longline fishing boat came through the region and killed many of their sharks overnight. It was really a quite horrific event, and immediately Stuart and concerned dive media spearheaded a campaign of outrage and education that led the Bahamas government to outlaw this destructive and indiscriminate fishing practice in their waters. Shark fishing is now illegal throughout the Bahamas, and the impressive populations of reef sharks and tigers that divers now enjoy are a direct result of this timely initiative.
Even so, legislation is no good without enforcement. Gratefully, the Stuart Cove dive boats are out there every day, diving with these sharks. If a rogue longliner should try to ignore the law and go for a quick score, the dive staff would see the boat and report it to the Bahamian Defense Force immediately. With protection in place, and lots of food from the daily shark feed dives, these schools of Caribbean reef shark have grown to be really quite impressive. On many of our feeds during Shark Shootout we had 50 sharks at a time, and not necessarily wimpy, "view-from-a-distance", sharks either. These are big/healthy/bold fish; quite willing to bump and thrash their way to the proffered bit of bait from the feeder.
Shark Shootout
For Shark Shootout to be effective, we knew we had to create certain, very specific advantages to our participants. Ideally, we should:
- Minimize backscatter - The sharks will inevitably stir up the bottom when they are swirling around the feeder, but having too many divers around the bait bucket can create problems as well, no matter how skilled they are in terms of buoyancy control and fin placement. So, we limited the event to 14 participants, and then added 2 or 3 shark feeders on each dive so that it was less likely sand would be stirred up.
- Provide the Sweet spot - Underwater photography is ideally conducted at near distances. Water is 600 times denser than air and minimizing the water column is essential to achieve optimal resolution and color in underwater photos. To that end, Shark Shootout participants were invited to enjoy much closer shark interaction than is possible in a normal shark feed. I think we are all a bit surprised about how close we can bring these sharks to our shooter's domes, safely. Now, after 5 years of Shark Shootout, getting close is the very least of anyone's problems. Here for example I had a shark actually bump my dome, as the flesh around the mouth, compressed by contact with the glass, reveals.
- Diverse shark venues - Nowhere in the diving world offers so many different ways of interacting with these Caribbean reef sharks. Part of it is a function of the Hollywood culture constantly pushing the boundaries of what Stuart Cove's shark wranglers have been able to coax these sharks to do. Yes, of course there is the traditional scenario of the feeder kneeling on the sand bottom with divers in a circular array nearby. But, we went far beyond the "traditional" during shark shootouts, and now we can photograph sharks on the bow and stern of the Ray of Hope shipwreck, from both inside and outside of a shark cage, alongside the sponge and gorgonia of a coral reef, and even on the surface as they swarmed our dive platform. So long as it was safe, and could yield great shark images, the staff the Stuart Cove staff has been willing to let us give it a try.
- Instruction - While I was at Shark Shootout to serve as an instructor, I think my role more evolved to be "coach". Our participants aren't so much interested in sitting in a dark classroom discussing the "theory" of shark photography, but instead are motivated to jump off the back of the boat into a swirl of two dozen sharks just to see what kind of images they could bring home. Once they acquired images, then instruction came into play and we would have classroom sessions devoted to efficient digital workflow, image critique, and instruction modules relative to Photoshop CS3 and Lightrooom conducted by former Adobe evangelist Daniel Brown.
The Contest
While Shark Shootout is really all about getting the very best shark photos possible; our shooters are a competitive bunch that appreciates being recognized for their talents. To that end, Shark Shootout 2007 was sponsored by Scubapro, Henderson dive apparel, and Storm equipment cases.
These images really tell the story of Shark Shootout, for it showcases the photo opportunities we enjoyed all week with the Caribbean reef sharks and the Stuart Cove shark wranglers, but it also demonstrates the extreme diversity of the environments we encountered sharks.
Contest categories and prizes
Black and White Conversion, Storm Case 2200
Winner - Bill Cook
Black and White Conversion, Storm Case im 2200
Winner - Bess Bright
Photoshop Manipulation, Storm Case im 2500
Winner - Carlos Parraga
Photoshop Manipulation, Storm Case im 2500
Winner - Mike Storm
Photoshop Manipulation, Scubapro Twin Jet Max Fins
Winner - Bob Gleeson
Diver shot, Scubapro Twin Jet Max Fins
Winner - George Robinson
Shark and Environment, Scubapro Twin Jet Max Fins
Winner - Gabriel Beyrent
Cage Shot, Scubapro MK11/R395 Regulator
Winner - Jay Haines
Over-Under shot, Scubapro Spectra mask
Winner - Craig Kinder
Surface Shot, Scubapro Spectra Mask
Winner - Jay Haines
Wreck Shot, Scubapro Backpack
Winner - Kim Cook
Bite Shot, Henderson 3mm Insta-Dry wetsuit
Winner - Paula Selby
Bite Shot, Henderson 3mm Insta-Dry Wetsuit
Winner - Mark Chapman
Editorial 5 shot series, Henderson 3mm Insta-Dry Wetsuit
Winner - Ana Maria Avila
Editorial 5 shot series, Henderson 3mm Insta-Dry Wetsuit
Winner - Gabriel Beyrent
* Some categories were so close, and the quality of images so superior we awarded duplicate prizes.
Digital Only
Shark Shootout is restricted to digital image capture, and is ideally optimized for cameras with minimal digital lag. The action is just too fast and frequent to have a camera that either writes too slowly to buffer, or worse yet, does not record the image exactly when the shutter release is depressed. There was so much shark action the whole week that those who came to the event with just 2 GB cards felt disadvantaged! Each of the dives was an hour or more, and then when we were doing surface intervals, we were feeding and photographing sharks off the back of the boat. Anyone shooting a high-resolution camera like the Canon EOS1DsMKII or Nikon D2X/D200 were probably capturing up to 12 GB of data per day.
The only other provisos were a ban on cordless slave strobes (nothing is more irritating than to frame the perfect shot, only to have a blinding hot spot show up in the image from another diver's cordless slave being triggered simultaneously), and some level of protective garb. We suggested divers wear hoods and booties, so bits of flesh weren't exposed to an accidental nibble, and of course all would wear full wetsuits.
The Shark-Ops
The Runway - The Runway has the advantage of being the shark locale closest to the dive shop, only about a mile offshore. But, more significantly, because it is so close this is where the sharks are fed every day, several times a day, and there are LOTS of them. Just motoring to the mooring ball will bring them to the surface, and since there is so much chumming being done at this location, there are huge schools of yellowtail snapper at the surface as well. This provides the unique visual of Caribbean reef sharks swimming to the stern of the boat.
The normal daily Runway photo-op is where the shark feeder, clad in chain-mail suit and helmet, swims to a sandy area in the reef and brings the divers into a circular pattern surrounding. The feeder uses a short pole to take the bait from the aluminum box. The shark takes the bait from the end of the pole, although rarely is it as controlled as the words imply. There is a lot of competition from the sharks, and sometimes it is hard to even get the bait out of the box without the feeder being swarmed. We did this only one day, and found it was nonproductive due to the silt being stirred up. Instead, we visited subsets of the Runway region, including:
The Ray of Hope - This 200-foot freighter was intentionally sunk as a dive attraction on July 13, 2003 and now sits in proximity to Runway. This proved to be one of our most productive shark venues because we could stage feed session of the bow or the stern, actually alternating between them when one or the other would get stirred up from the feeding action. The ship offered the advantage of being much cleaner than the sand bottom of the Runway, and we were in shallower water as well, allowing more generous bottom time. The stern was a bit tricky because the sharks have to navigate some railings, and occasionally they'd get a bit frenetic if it seemed they might get stuck. The bow was wide open, with some interesting deck gears and windlass to provide compositional element. Because the ship was so big, we could have 2 feeders there, one on the bow and one on the stern, each with distinct shark populations, allowing for far smaller numbers of shooters competing for that frozen moment in time when shark hits bait for the iconic "bite" shot.
The Shark Cage - The traditional use of a shark cage is to protect a diver behind the bars while bait is used to bring a shark near. The traditional way a shark cage is deployed is tied off from the stern of a boat. However, Shark Shootout is all about doing things in creatively nontraditional ways, so we had the shark cage tied off to the bottom, with air in its buoyancy tanks to keep it floating in the midwater. This kept the scene free of stirred sand causing backscatter. We put the feeder inside, while the shooters moved freely about outside the cage to shoot the action. The provided a nice sense of scale and occasionally one of us would pop inside the cage to get the shot of the shark taking the bait from the feeder's perspective.
The Treasure Wreck - Among the many Hollywood projects to come to Stuart Cove's was the underwater filming of Into The Blue, starring Paul Walker and Jessica Alba. There was a wooden treasure ship built as an underwater set, also near the Runway, and this too proved a good shark venue for us as it kept the sharks off the sand bottom, and consequently there was less backscatter generated. Nearby is a nice coral reef, so we were able to put a shark wrangler on both areas, again to keep the group of shooters small and manageable, and the encounters optimal.
Bahama Mama - This is another small shipwreck, now essentially flattened by passing hurricanes. But because her metal hull also protects the feeding station from getting stirred up by the frenetic shark action, this proved a stellar platform.
Actually, the Ray of Hope and Bahama Mama are very close to one another, so we staged the shark cage in proximity as well, and most days when we were working the Runway we could actually have three feeders working sharks in three separate locations. Several times I had a shark and feeder to myself, as did all the Shootout participants. This kind of shark access happens nowhere else, and only within the context of Shark Shootout or a very expensive commercial photo shoot.
Shark Wall - The final shark venue is Shark Wall is about a 7-mile run offshore, with a far more decorated coral bottom and usually even better visibility than one might experience at Runway. The sharks here don't get fed as much as they do at Runway, making it a less predictable feed. Sometimes the sharks here were pretty rowdy, not to us shark shooters of course, but our wranglers often get bashed about here. Running back from Shark Wall also provides the opportunity to dive Southwest Reef, a gorgeous shallow reef rich with elkhorn, seafans, and fire coral; all in only 10 to 15 feet of water.
Surface Action - This was one of the highlights of our Shark Shootout, and an activity not experienced by most shark feed scenarios. We baited the sharks (and yellowtail) to the back of the boat while we were doing our surface interval between the first and second dive. The boat was fully catered, so all food and drinks were aboard and we did not have to go back to the dock for lunch. That gave us the luxury of time, in the mid-day light, to try over/unders with sharks hitting the bait, polecam work, topside shots of dorsal fins cleaving the surface, and slow shutter speed renditions of the sharks zipping by. Often we would strap ourselves the dive ladder, and ask the crew to bring the shark to within just a few inches of the dome (or even closer as it turned out) so we could try over/unders and subsurface shots.
There is no place in the world with as many sharks, delivered so close and so safely to the photographer as there are today at Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas. This creates a rare and wondrous opportunity to learn shark photography in an intimate "extreme access" scenario. It happens only once a year, next year October 4 - 11, 2008. For information or reservations (limited availability so I would recommend confirming at soonest opportunity), visit www.stuartcove.com, www.sharkshootout.com, or phone 800-879-9832 or 954-524-5755.
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