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I was in Paris not long ago, deeply immersed in art. However, I have withdrawal symptoms if not immersed in water for long periods.
This is the tub in room 217 of Hotel Raphael, not far from the Champs-Elysees and Arc de Triomphe.
Let's switch gears and move to the waterline. We're still working with a 17MPix Canon in a housing, but it's just wet now, not underwater. And we're working with a couple of real boys having a great time running the beach.
A friend of mine was shooting images last weekend and ended up with a photo of his weekend feet in unmatched socks. They became his Monday Blog entry.
Today, ace first assistant Christina Macfarlane shows up in the studio for a sheepskin scarf shoot and her feet are worse than the friend's. We turned up the music, put her feet in the air, shot a couple of sock frames, laughed a lot, then went back to sheepskin.
Seastars like the one here all but disappeared from Cozumel after the last big hurricane. Perhaps this is a sign they are returning.
Captain Sergio Sandova and his crew took us all over the shallow areas at the northwest corner of the island searching for a clean white sandy bottom and the elusive blue-tailed siren. Sometime after Sergio's homemade tuna salad lunch on the spacious back deck of his wide-beam boat, we got in the water and all the pieces came together.
I know I'm sporadic about uploading images; it's just a function of the business. Some days I can and some days I can't.
A couple of weeks ago in Mexico, Malena Sharkey and her new tail produced some images we're very happy to add to the book.
It's easy to forget how demanding it is for Malena, Christina, Hannah and Sherry to do these images. It's routine photography times ten. Exhale, not inhale, and dive so they don't look puffed up in the face and torso. Stay down long enough for a series of frames with strobe re-cycle pauses. Have enough weight in the tail to be about neutrally buoyant. Imagining what the photographer sees with 80 percent of their own sight gone. Careful to keep tender body parts from touching underwater things that stick, sting or bite. Smiling when the photographer pops to the surface and says "only 80 more frames on this 4GB chip."
The island, Cozumel, a few miles off the mainland, was a warm 85F with lots of sunshine, a scattering of white puffy clouds and 82F water temperature. Malena Sharkey, Bob Minnick and I worked for several hours looking for the underwater landscape and light in this frame.
This is from a collection of images for the book, "Femme de la Mer." The mermaid is Malena Sharkey; safety diver was Bob Minnick. See the book dummy at http://femmedelamer.com or http://womenofthesea.com.