IMAGING
//
S H O O T E R
96
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FALL 2013
creatures in ways no one had seen before,
and larger marine animals afforded
me that possibility. I found that I could
use photography not only as a tool for
education but also for scientific discovery,
revealing biological phenomena that were
previously unknown.
SF
// Can you give an example?
dp
//
My photos of a vampire snail
feeding led to a peer-reviewed scientific
publication that described the eating
habits of that blood-sucking mollusk.
It had been described scientifically by
genus and species, but no one really knew
what it did for a living until I captured a
shot that showed it using its proboscis to
pierce the oral membrane of a sleeping
parrotfish and suck its blood. Another
set of photos that led to a scientific
publication were my images that showed,
for the first time, the spectacular mass-
spawning behavior of dog snappers.
I wish I could convey to your
readers, especially the younger ones,
the excitement of shooting big animals
underwater in the ’80s and ’90s. Just about
every time I photographed a species that
I hadn’t shot before I was documenting
something that almost nobody knew
what it looked like underwater. With
sharks, especially, if you could get a good
underwater shot it was fairly likely to be
the first publishable picture of that species
in its natural habitat. It was the same with
many cetaceans.
In fish-ID books in those days, most of
the sharks were illustrated with pictures
of bloody, contorted specimens lying
on boat decks or artists’ renderings that
were often inaccurate. It has taken three
decades, but it’s finally rare to read about
“the shark,” as if all sharks belong to a
single species and behave in an identical
fashion. I credit photographers even
more than scientists with dispelling that
myth. Although there are still many
species that haven’t been properly
photographed and lots of behaviors and
phenomena yet to be discovered, a new
wave of largely recreational and semipro
photographers is rapidly enlarging
the collective visual record of marine
life, even as many species are being
drastically diminished by overfishing and
environmental change.
In the ocean, we are on the last frontier
of exploration, trying to document things
that have never been seen and species
that might be vanishing from the planet.
I’ve made it my business to put effort into
doing something unique.
SF
// Define “unique.” Are you
looking to photograph that which
has never been seen or to present
things in ways they’ve never before
been shown?
dp
//
I’m more interested in the
former, but the latter can be equally
compelling. A quintessential example
of a novel presentation is David
Doubilet’s iconic over/under shot
of a stingray on Grand Cayman’s
Sandbar 30 years ago. He saw in his
head this beautiful picture, and he
had the technical skills to surmount
the challenges of capturing the image.
Others have stood in that same spot
trying to replicate the same image
many times, and maybe some have
even done it better, for capture
technology has obviously improved,
and perhaps someone had the good
fortune of better synergy of light and
life, but no one else did it first.
In many ways, the era of the secretive
nature photographer has come to an
end. I have always tried to be generous
with sharing information about photo
techniques and equipment, but like
many old-school pros I have not always
immediately broadcast every detail of
where, when and how I got a unique
image. That would enable copycat
photographers to flood the market
before I could earn back the investment
I made in cracking the nut for the
first time. I rarely lead tours or teach
workshops that would put me in direct
competition with my own students or
clients, but these days you can have an
amazing once-in-a-lifetime encounter
in a remote fishing village of 30 people,
and by nightfall your dinghy driver has
posted about it on his Facebook page,
and a dive tour operator has read about
it and begun putting a group together
to do the same thing. Social media and
the immediacy and colossal reach of the
Internet have changed everything … for
good and for bad.
SF
// You have been very active in
the stock photography business,
even to the extent that you founded
your own agency. How has that fit
into your overall business plan?
dp
//
I can’t say I ever really had a
business plan, I’ve just stubbornly
insisted on always doing what I liked.
My stock photo agency has now
morphed into SeaPics, an evolution
of Innerspace Visions, which was an
outgrowth of the International Shark
Photo File.
At one time, back in the late ’80s and
early ’90s, I had something of a lock
on underwater photos of bull sharks,
lemon sharks, silky sharks, tiger sharks,
Caribbean reef sharks, sharpnose sharks,
shark births, shark skin, shark fossils and
a few other subjects. I was getting lots
of calls from people doing books and
magazine articles on sharks. But they also
wanted things I hadn’t photographed,
such as blue sharks, makos and great
whites. It didn’t make sense to me to
run around the world photographing
species that had already been extensively
Opposite, clockwise from upper left: Greenland shark with a copepod parasite attached to its
eye, Quebec; triton’s trumpet eating a crown-of-thorns starfish; rarely-photographed
Morelet’s crocodile in a cenote, Yucatan Peninsula; minke whale; Amazonian manatees;
bronze whaler sharks in the sardine run, South Africa; bioluminescent plankton
in the Maldives; humpback whale pod in Hawaii (NMFS research permit #587)
