Cave diving photography is one of the most challenging and potentially dangerous kinds of all human activities. A lot of things can go wrong when you go into a deep cave. Many more can go wrong when the cave is also filled with water. This said, imagine doing the last two while at the same time being occupied with the right angle and perfect lighting of a beautiful underwater cave shot. Not the easiest job on earth, ha? Naturally, this kind of activity requires special training and equipment as well as state certification. Cave diving is not a game. According to American Caving Accidents, a special yearly report of The National Speleological Society tracking cave diving accidents, 50 American divers have died in 44 fatal cave diving accidents since the year 2000 and until end of 2007 and the numbers keep going up. So, just to make sure - if you are not certified and trained for cave diving, don't even think about trying it.
Gladly, in reality most underwater explorations end up with a satisfied diver and some very good stories, while some of them even have spectacular underwater photos to tell their stories for them. Following is a photo compilation from 6 cave diver-photographers who have followed the rules and came back to share their experience and photos with us. All images are copyrighted and are the property of the corresponding photographers. For more about Cave Diving see Wikipedia.
Wes Skiles
The underwater caving photographs of Wes Skiles are of the most well known and highly valued available nowadays anywhere in the world. Skiles is a professional high-definition nature photographer and film director and the CEO of Karst Productions, specializing in high-risk operations of nature exploration projects.
His clients include world leading media channels including the National Geographic with which he made quite a few amazing projects. During his career Skiles has won many awards including the HDFEST Deffie for Best Documentary Film (twice), Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival (finalist, 2003) Gold Aurora Award (2003), Crystal Reel Awards (2003) and Best Educational Film Cine Golden Eagle 2003.
http://www.wesskiles.com
Deighton
Deighton does not seem to be a professional cave diver yet he practices the combination of cave diving and photography and manages to obtain exceptional results with his photos. The above were taken during his cave diving journey in Mayan Riviera, Mexico on November 10-14, 2005. More photos from Deighton on this Picsa webAlbum.
Andreas W. Matthes
Andreas Matthes is a highly experienced Closed-Circuit Rebreathers Cave (CCR) Instructor living in Mexico who has been training CCR cave diving since 1997, conducting thousands of cave dives world wide. Matthes received the NSS-CDS International Cave Diving Safety Award as well as the NACD Wakulla Gold Award for 1000 completed cave dives, both in the year of 2001. For more about rebreathers technology see here.
Other than being a professional underwater cave diver and photographer Matthes is also an avid webmater. He runs a website dedicated to closed-circuit rebreathers (CCR) cave diving, a type of mixed-gas system, enabling descent to much greater depths than can be safely reached with oxygen rebreathers or normal compressed air equipment. For more about rebreathers technology see here. The above photos were taken in Mexico with an Olympus 3030 digital camera during a CCR exploration journey. The camera was placed into a Light and Motion Tetra housing featuring a screw-on wide angle lens converter.
http://www.andreaswmatthes.com
Allen Wooten
With a Master of Business Administration (MBA) Degree Allen Wooten spends most of his time doing Corporate Accounting for a Fortune 500 Company in South Georgia USA. On other times, just about every other weekend, Wooten likes diving to the North Florida caves.
Wooten is a certified member of the NSS-CDS and DAN and practice various technical diving activities including sidemount, drysuit and scooter/DPV diving, as well as cave diving photography. He has a low-volume garage factory for gas mixing of nitrox, trimix, and deco bottles at home and has previously adopted 50 ft of cave passage in the deep section (165 ft deep) of Lower Lower Orange Grove Sink.
http://www.cavedivingrocks.com
John Blausey
With 14 years of dive experience John Blausey has a record of thousands of dives all over the world. He is the principal instructor and manager of AcmeScuba, a company specializing in various adventurous dive training including night dives, deep dives, search and recovery and underwater photography.
As a Master SCUBA Diver Trainer, Blausey provides a complete diver training program set forth by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors. The above photographs were taken Jul 24, 2007 during an underwater caving trip in Dominican Republic. The camera in use is a Canon PowerShot G7. More photos from this dive on Blausey's Picsa webAlbum.
Nick
Not much is known about Nick except for his first name and the fact he is a skilled cave diver and a talented underwater cave photographer. The above photo selection was taken on Jul 31 - August 1, 2007 during Nick's caving journey in Florida. More photos from Nick on this Picsa webAlbum.
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Challenging Neptune: 6 Underwater Cave Photographers
From Gichin Funakoshi to Hidetaka Nishiyama and Moshe Rokah: My old love story with Karate
In my late teenage years and early twenties I used to practice Karate in a group named Fujiyama. It was a non-profit group of friends so we didn't have any place of our own to use as a Dojo. Thus, we used this helicopter landing facility in Gan Saker park in Jerusalem, just a few minutes walk from the Israel parliament, which was just the perfect place when it was not too hot or too cold. I find those days hard to believe myself so here is a Google Earth kml link for the exact Fujiyama Dojo location and below you can see a picture of me practicing when I was about 20, even though this one was taken in another park in Jerusalem rather than our usual Dojo.
Anyways, my point is that (other than having this crazy looking beard) I was in a very good physical shape in those days. A 5-10 Kilometer run, for example, was a common fun afternoon pastime but unfortunately we are talking history here and things have changed tremendously since then. I am on my way to be 39 next June and have been working almost entirely in front of computer screens for the past 12 years. Managing the development of the new Conceptis website in the past 4 years didn't make things any better either. I do walk around the neighborhood from time to time but it's obviously not enough. So, realizing I need to do something about it quite urgently I followed this link from my wife today to the website of the Poleg Karate Center, the central Dojo of ITKF in Israel. It's not much of a website and no, I don't think this would solve my problems but I still like to share a few in my opinion interesting facts:
Karate is not a game or a sport but a form of martial art with a few sub-methods. I used to practice Shotokan which was invented in the arly 20th century by a cool fellow named Gichin Funakoshi (seen in the above picture courtesy of fski.licomnet.com) and fits thin (58kg) and, mmm, not very high (169 cm) people like myself. I have visited a few Karate clubs in the past years looking for a place to practice Shotokan Karate with practice routines that will fit the way I would like to train this particular form of martial art. Except for a certain club I visited in Tokyo during my visit there with Dave Green in 2004, I have always been disappointed from what I saw and was tuned off.
The Fujiyama group was disassembled soon after both of our Senseis and a few of our team-members made a move to live in Los Angeles in the early nineties so they can practice in Sensei Hidetaka Nishiyama's studio, a legendary Karateka seen in the above video from 1955. To the best of my knowledge at least one of my Fujiyama mates, a fellow named Eran Shine who used to be a very good friend of mine and is also an actor who played the SS officer in Timecop 2 AKA Timecop: The Berlin Decision and has a page on IMDB) still is an active member in Nishiyama's club. Unfortunately I have not been in touch with Eran for a few years. Perhaps this would be one of those things that will somehow change things with that respect. You can see Eran in the above B&W photo, shown behind me on the left side of the photo.
The world is small and reading his website I believe that other than being the coach of the Israeli team representing Israel in international championships, Sensei Moshe Rokah (in the above picture) is also the brother of or otherwise related to Sensei Avi Rokah, who was in some point of time a close friend of a few members in out group and practiced the same methods. It says on the site that the Dojo was established "more than ten years ago, by Sensei Moshe Rokah, after his return from LA, where he studied the art of the empty hand for ten years from Sensei Hidetaka Nishiyama, 9th Dan, chief instructor and founder of ITKF".
Thanks wife. What a link! I told myself many times I will change things in my life after we launch the new site. Now I know that one of them will be getting back to practicing Karate. Sensei Rokah's Dojo is open 6 days a week, morning and evening (fantastic!) and all classes are thought by himself. In addition, there are beginner classes in the evenings which is perfect for this individual at home... I plan to contact Moshe Rokah (972-50-268-61-65 or 972-9-8350163) visit and experience one of his beginner classes as soon as I can. The Poleg karate Center in Natanya is located approximately 3 minuets driving from where I write this post.
More about what Karate is in this great Wikipedia article, and here is a beautiful video of the Heian Godan kata. A Kata is a set of 20 to 70 moves simulating a combat between the performer and various number of imaginary opponents in a given space.
