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When Cole finished high school, his family had moved to
landlocked Spokane, Wash., and he was no closer to the sea —
no nearer to his dream. But he was old enough to determine
his own direction, and he chose a college near the ocean. As a
student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the smell
of salt water and the sound of the surf revived his soul. Like
so many who know they want to do something ocean-related
but aren’t sure what, he majored in marine biology, and he
even began working toward his doctorate. But he recognized a
traditional career in science might tie him to a lab or an office,
and he was more of an in-the-field kind of guy.
Photography was not even on his horizon until an
assignment as an underwater researcher put him in contact
with an established professional underwater photographer,
Norbert Wu. Cole was a research diver on a vessel working
in Southern California’s Channel Islands when Wu came
aboard with an assignment to shoot mantis shrimp.
Watching Wu work and listening to him talk about the
business of underwater photography, Cole began to consider
its potential. By the time he was in his junior year of college,
photography became a plausible career for him. Yet being a
practical person by nature, Cole did, in his words, “the smart,
safe, expected thing: I secured a Ph.D. posting at Florida
State University in Tallahassee.” Then almost immediately he
asked for and received a research assignment in Australia.
Headed to the southern hemisphere with the opportunity
to dive exotic waters, he realized he needed a proper
underwater-camera system. Wu was selling one of his old
ones, a Canon F-1 single-lens reflex camera in an Oceanic
Hydro 35 housing. It was “battle-tested, used and abused,”
Cole said, but it was commensurately cheap and had a
proven record of bringing home images. Those first rolls of
film weren’t all that great (the camera didn’t magically imbue
him with the skill of its previous owner), so he learned the
hard way, teaching himself through “trial and lots of error.”
He was on track for his grand plan, but life has a way of not
going as predicted. Cole was in Australia for only a month
when family tragedy struck. His father was killed, and Cole
had to return home. His dad had owned a furniture store in
Spokane Valley, and his mom asked if Cole wanted to take
over the family business. But it was hardly a career path he
could reconcile with his passion, so he declined, and his mom
closed the store. A philosophical fork in the road appeared for
Cole. Would he head back to Australia to continue working
toward his doctorate, or would he try a career in underwater
photography? Like so many who are just getting started, he
had little to lose by giving photography a try, and by February
1993 he officially launched his career with a self-funded
trip to Hawaii and the self-imposed task of making some
photographs he could sell to a dive magazine.
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SUMMER 2012
IMAGING
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S H O O T E R