Hello and welcome to Out of the Darkroom on Adorama TV. I'm Ruth Medjber and
joining me on the show today is George Karbus. George documents the Irish coastline
both from on land and under the water.
AdoramTV presents 'Out of the Darkroom' with Ruth Medjber.
George, thanks so much for driving all the way up here and joining me today. It's very good of you.
So if you don't mind, I'd love to know a little bit about how you got started in photography.
Yeah it's been 11 years... pretty much everything started in Ireland since, you
know, we moved to Ireland from a very hot place in
Spain, from Spain. I started a little bit of photography in Spain. I was like point
and shoot camera, film camera. But you know I was just a poor, young guy pretty
much living a life under the sun and when we decided to move to Ireland we
just came to the West Coast. I got blown away instantly by the beauty of
the coastline, by the weather,
the clouds, the light and yeah, it was the first impulse to start photography properly and like buying cameras.
You were just inspired by the landscape
Inspired by Ireland, the beauty of the Irish coastline, pretty much.
You document it like no other photographer I've ever seen. I mean I'm looking at
pictures of Ireland, of places that I know and I'm thinking 'How has he done that? That looks so
ridiculous.' The sun is shining or there's beautiful clouds. Anytime I'm down there
it's just raining. How do you do that? How do you make Ireland look so beautiful? Do
you wait for the weather to break or?
It's kind of magic... you need to be at the
place as often and you kind of have to live there and spend so much time
and wait for those gorgeous conditions. You have to read weather forecasts, you
need to, you need to get to know a place well and after you get to know the
place, you get you know everything about tides, about winds, about different time of
the year,
different seasons, then you learn about the different lighting and then you can
kind of predict situations and then you actually master these places like
Cliffs of Moher. I can say that I've mastered Cliffs of Moher because I've been shooting there
for 10 years. I spent hundreds of hours photographing those cliffs and, yeah, I
can say like not many people have probably better pictures of cliffs than me
because I've spent so much time there and it's my backyard so...
Do you sometimes go into the water to take shots. You know, I'm thinking of...
there's an island with all the birds and the red sky, yeah you've got a beautiful
shot. We'll bring it up on screen now so people can see it. I mean there's
shots there and I'm looking going, that's not a straight shot. I need to know how we
get to that. Is there like filters on those lenses? What lenses are you using? Maybe you
could give us a little insight into the gear that you bring out for different,
different types of shots. I know it's hard because you take so many different
styles of photography.
If I can start from water gear. For the water, I use two different housings, one for diving but I never
scuba dive, I always free dive, so I always like to swim in a lightweight and
free to quickly adjusting my position, usually swimming with quick-moving
animals like dolphins, sharks and mantas. When I photograph waves under water I have to
move very quickly so it's very physical and it's more like a free diving.
It's about fitness as well. So far that kind of shooting I'm using lots of
different kinds of wetsuits and housing, camera housing and underwater Subal
housings. Then I am using splash housings which, that's what we call, like a surf housing which is
lightweight carbon-fiber housing, desigedn for surf photography. It's actually
designed just to swim with that housing and on those surf breaks and
photograph waves. So that's the water gear. For landscapes you need a
good tripod, especially in Ireland. It's windy and you need to keep your camera
steady, especially on those stormy pictures, so very steady tripod which I
use the Gitzo, one of the top of the range of Gitzo. Then of course, filters.
Yeah, tell me about your filters. You must have some magic filters
I ended up using, now, NiSi filters which are
pretty good and I'm in contact with the
distributor in, the European distributor and he gave me a few to try and I liked them and I stick to them.
So NiSi 150mm square filters, pretty good system so I'm using, like, ND 10- stoppers,
6-stoppers and polarizers.
Fantastic. That's a lot of gear.
And plus, of course, many lenses and cameras.
What body do you favor right now?
Now I'm using a Nikon D4S as a prime body for
actions and kind of low light photography and for landscapes, D800.
I didn't upgrade to D810 because there was a very small difference
so the 800 is still doing a great job for my landscapes.
Some of the shots that you get are absolutely incredible and
like again I am totally blown away in that I don't know how
you get most of them. Is it crazy to think that you have built up
relationships with individual dolphins?
Yeah that's probably my lack
of Irish because when we came to Ireland we built this relationship with this
bottle-nosed dolphin in the West Coast,
and there is one solitary female dolphin. That time she was very young and we
built a relationship. We started to swim every almost, like, every two days, every
week with her and we built a relationship and I was able to get, like, amazing
shots because we were so, so close and the trust, you know, the trust between us
allowed to photograph dolphins like no one else before.
So I mean, there's shots that I'm still thinking
like, they look like they're artificially lit so the whales, as you have
like, Beluga whales, the ghost shot that you have, that to me is amazing because
the light is so evenly spread. How does that come about? Is that just... obviously
you're not using any flash down there are you?
No, that's one of my rules I don't use
flash with animals... with big animals. I wouldn't even recommended it. It's
disturbing for them and you know, for big animals it's useless anyway so I like, I
like to keep it naturally, so I work with natural light. I wait for my light. I wait
for the perfect conditions to do that and for example with Belugas, it was
in the Arctic circle. They were under ice and they're
white animals in the dark, black water so they pop, so it's very easy
it's pretty easy. White animals are easy to shoot.
You say easy, but I'm sure I could never do it.
And tell me when you are photographing waves, because I know our production crew here, we were all
going over your website and there was loads of questions about technique and how you
get things. The shots where you're almost in the water, where you are in, like
underwater and you're looking through a wave at cliffs and that kind of thing. I mean, how...
What are your exposure settings for that? I mean are you super fast like?
Yeah, like it's easy. Photography these days, it's...
I love when you say 'it's easy'. It's not easy!
I mean the settings are easy. It's not easy to get there but the settings are easy.
With cameras, with latest cameras, you
don't have to be worried about ISO so I'm very comfortable now, using D4S
like I'm using manual mode and I'll do auto ISO which is like
amazing because I'm pretty sure, you know, I'll just set up everything, like, for fast. If I
want to freeze the scene I go over 1,000
shutter speed, and nice, maybe F8 and then ISO does the job for me.
With the underwater stuff like the deep underwater with the whales and then with also this
surf photography. To me that seems very dangerous. You're getting waves
crashing down on you. Do not feel a little bit threatened or scared or anything?
Yeah, it's about, again, you can't really do that without the knowledge of the sea and
knowledge, without actually surfing knowledge. I've been surfing a lot. It's my
big passion, so I surf when I'm not photographing, I surf. I train hard to
to be comfortable in the water and to surviving in situations like that and to
be able to cope with the speed of dolphins, the speed of animals, so I train hard.
So not only do you know your gear and your cameras, but you actually put a lot of work into yourself.
Yeah it's very physical
Was there any kind of critical points in your career in the
last 11 years where things have gone really wrong? Any dangers or catastrophes
There was a super dangerous situation. We were photographing
under the Cliffs of Moher, the famous wave Aileen and we were onto boat and then something
happened. We got with... the engine just choked up and we couldn't start the engine
and we just drifted into the... we drifted into the wave and the wave basically
capsized the boat. It was a pretty big day, a really, really dangerous spot.
And some people went over the force, swimming, they got washed under
the Cliffs of Moher. Two of us, we made it through to the wave frame and swam towards the
Gold Trail. It's a very kind of dodgy place where you can actually
leave the Cliffs of Moher from the water but
what big-wave surfers do but, yeah, there was lots of gear lost and it
was a dangerous situation.
Did everyone make it out ok?
Everyone made it out OK, thanks to big-wave surfers help, you know, everyone got straight away
after the situation,
everyone got into the rescue. All the big-wave surfers, you know, know how to drive jet skis
into the craziest waters so they rescued two others from under the cliffs.
Something, as well, that our viewers are always keen to know with photographers that I bring
on the show is, is it your full-time job or is it a really expensive hobby?
Yeah because I'm so, my life is so simple I don't know if I could survive in
Dublin with such an income which I have from my
nature photography but it is my full-time job and it's up and down.
It's up and down. I am not a millionaire. I'm not, you know, I'm driving
a Corolla, I mean I have a good camper van which I bought from really good
projects, but the projects come and then you don't have any money, and then
you know, I'm always... I'm very lucky so every time I feel, you know like,
I should maybe start shooting weddings and stuff like that, the
new project comes and saves me.
Saves you from that wedding world. I mean it's nice. That's why you love what you do and
so it's just a lot more enjoyable if you're not like a millionaire,
it doesn't really matter because you get up in the morning then you love going
and doing what you're doing and as well, you can share with us in terms of
print sales. You sell the prints don't you? Online where we can buy them, so I mean
that's fantastic for us. Not every photographer does that but I think for
pieces that, I mean we were looking through your website and we were like 'Oh I'd love that on the wall, I'd
love that and it's so accessible, it's so lovely, it's so beautiful and so hopefully people
can go and purchase from your site as well. I just want to thank you so much for doing
what you do and going and photographing Ireland. We're so lucky to have you here
because I've never seen her looking more beautiful. And thanks for coming and
sharing your stories with me.
Thank you. Thanks for the invitation.
Yeah no problem. Cheers.
Well that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed the
show. If you'd like to start the conversation, then please feel free to leave a comment below.
I do appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to brush up on your own photography
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