Aquatech Underwater Photography Class
If you combine fourteen years of teaching with my passion for underwater photography, you would most likely find me teaching an underwater photography class with a side of playful kids.
Just before the world shut down in February 2020, I took the Amtrak up to Santa Barbara to teach a group of nine photographers the joys and complexities of shooting underwater.
Aquatech Imaging solutions was awesome enough to sponsor us and provide housing for all the students, at the (heated) Leta Hotel pool. We worked with four models styled in Seaesta swimwear and Converse shoes.
Underwater photography
Shooting underwater provides an unpredictable yet playful atmosphere, where everyone got a chance to practice using their photography skills in a brand new way.
The models cannon balled, and swam as we worked on shooting with the noonday sun above us.
When I photograph my clients in their backyard pools, it offers a unique and special way to capture that playful attitude kids have.
In my Fine art portrait work with families in Newport Beach, my goal is to take photos of children to remind them what it felt like to spend their summer days out in the pool, back and forth from lying on their stomach on the hot pavement, to diving and doing cannonball splash contests.
As a class we worked on different methods to interact with the models to get the most out of their personalities.
This feels like it was ages ago, but remembering a time in life where I had no clue the trainwreck the future pandemic would bring is comical in a way.
This felt like the start of teaching and meeting new people, only to find two weeks later we would be stuck in our homes for months on end.