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With this particular job, we had to shoot images of a mermaid type lady as if it were in an ocean setting.
Bearing in mind this was in the days before Photoshop. It is amazing how it has all changed.


I used a Mamiya 645 in an
underwater housing , with a
dome port (to maximize the
optics of my wide-angle lens).

We had a crew of eight. Seven underwater and 2 up top. Lighting was 2 x flash heads with softboxes above the water but firing directly into the deep end of the pool.

Grateful thanks to: Unipart
Complete Communications,
Richard Leonard, Steve,
Keith at Radley College
& Karen.

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By trail and error, we found that
the model had to have an air tank
at each side of the pool, so that
she could swim in froint of the
camera with ease. We tried her
diving in and swimming past - not
pretty! bubbles poured out of her
nose (below - note her entry
splash) and her eyes were bulging.

The whole shoot including the
adrift on the raft bit, took 6 hours.
This was par-for-the-course on a
location shoot.

If I could do it again, with Photoshop
as my darkroom, then I would treat
the whole job in a different way to
make it more authentic. As it was
though we all had a good time and
the client got the images they needed.