Hello I'm Martin Dorey and you're watching AdoramaTV.
Thanks for joining me again today for my series about photographers working at
the extreme.
Today I'm meeting Alastair Scarlett who is a free diving photographer who is
capturing some quite incredible underwater photographs
So you're using a 20 mm lens on there, fixed?
Yeah, fixed 20 mm f/1.8 which is really
good at low light, which is obviously what we need when we're underwater.
And so tell me about, you know, when you are underwater, how quickly do you lose
the light the deeper you go? How does it work?
Yeah so every 10 meters you're losing about fifty percent of light, so it rapidly
decreases as you go deeper.
Right, okay, so but when you're down to 20 meters you're operating in what? A quarter
of the light at the surface, something like that so you need a fast lens and high ISO.
Yeah and also the color spectrum
changes as well. You lose red, for instance, at 10 meters
and that's where the strobes come in really to bring back
some color into a shot.
And would you ever use filters or would you filter afterwards?
No, in a
pool, possibly, but in the sea there's just too many variables, it's something I do back at home.
Right okay.
Fascinating, brilliant. So the shots that we're talking about, where were they
taken and why were they taken there and what's so good about the conditions there?
Yeah, each year we go to Gozo because it's really good visibility there,
blue waters, quite warm,
topographies and saying out there and you have a few wrecks which we can reach
free divers.
You're shooting free divers, but you're free diving yourself so tell
me about the difficulties of working like that.
Obviously underwater you can't communicate to each other
so you have a chat on the surface before you go down.
Going deep is quite hard and you need to all be in sync to get down to,
say, 18 meters to do the shot.
The shot with the the guy with the flag on the boat, with Ian,
what kind of process did you have to go through to get that shot?
Yeah, this shot I had thought about back here, at home. I had the Cornish flag and
it was, you know, Cornish group going out to Malta so I thought it'd be quite cool
to get on the...
get on the bow of the ship and wave it around, so we got there, it was all a bit
hectic and you know we've got it all
all together quite quickly and, you know, you have that one minute or so to do the shot
Tell us about the rig because obviously this is something pretty special
When you're buying a rig like this,
you have the choice of a full frame sensor or a crop sensor. Crop sensor is probably
the sensible way to go because you've got a smaller rig, it's a bit lighter, it
might be a little bit cheaper but I think I'm after that one big shot
where you know it's really good, detailed, something I can blow up as big as possible.
What's the camera you're using inside and how much control does the rig give you?
OK, I'm using a Nikon D810 and I have absolutely full control of all the buttons.
So absolutely anything. So you could go to any setting you want to at any point?
Yeah.
How easy is it to swim with it? I mean how easy is it to use,
you know what happens?
OK, well out of the water,
this is my eight kilos of metal. It's horrible to carry around but in the
water is neutrally buoyant. So I mean,
hydro dynamically, it's a little bit like a break, I guess, but on the
other hand, from thinking about the camera I'm not worrying about holding my
breath or, you know, running out or getting too deep or anything like that so I think
it actually helps my free diving a little bit to be honest.
Why free diving and not scuba diving?
OK, I think as a scuba diver, it's a lot more advantageous to take macro shots
because you've got the time, you can set up your scene, you can adjust your strobes.
As a free diver,
you don't have that much time, so for me it's about the big shots. You know,
we're looking at a bit of scenery, it's wide angle, looking up. We get topography going
on
and, for me, getting a diver in there so it's all as one.
It's really interesting.
And do you have to have any qualifications to free dive?
Yeah, so I've been free diving for four years under the AIDA governing body, initially, there's a very
fast progression which makes it addictive because in a weekend you're suddenly holding
your breath for
three and a half minutes. You're diving down to 15 meters on it so I was like 'wow, this is
incredible' and then it's a little bit slower progression to get a bit further
on and and get a bit deeper and hold your breath for longer.
So you've got a team, yeah and what would be your typical team?
So when we travel on a free dive 'holiday'. I'm not allowed say holiday
You'd have a set of instructors with you
so if I was going to do a certain shot we'd have them in the background
just keeping an eye on us because things can go wrong very quickly under water.
So that's a scuba diver for safety?
No, no it's all free diving.
All free diving.
Because scuba divers they can't come to the surface quickly so you have to
have a free diver to come up at the same speed as you.
How many shots have you got in your mind before you actually do them?
Since a kid, actually, I've always been looking at other peoples images so, you know, I'll be sitting
in the library when I was supposed to be doing a dissertation just scouring over images so it's the same,
I'll be on the internet, I'll be on Instagram, I'll be on, you know, googling wreck images of
free diving stuff
and just getting a sort of rough idea of what's out there and 'oh that would be cool to
try out something similar' and then when you're in the water obviously stuff
happens as well but it's nice to go in with something in your head otherwise
you're just like snapping away at anything and you throw all your
images away at the end of the day.
Thanks for joining me on AdoramaTV today. If you want to see more of Alastair's work go
to alastairscarlett.com.
Meanwhile, for more great hints and tips go to the Adorama Learning Center and
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See you next time.