Description
LOCATION: Papua New Guinea
STORY BEHIND THE SHOT: While friends sometimes call me a “jelly-freak”, I prefer to self-describe as a “jellyfish aficionado”. I’ve been known to find a jellyfish floating through the water column and abort the entire dive, drifting with it wherever the current takes us for over an hour. In a way, even out in the open blue, with no visual reference, the jellyfish acts as my “anchor”, giving me something to hold relative position against, even if we cover a mile or more in our time together.
This individual was lucky find. While I came to know this particular deep-water pinnacle for its drifting pelagic creatures, I was more accustomed to shooting schools of jacks and barracuda. But on this calmer-than-usual day out at sea, I was located by what appeared to be an alien landing craft, and I was able to drift with it for an entire tank of air. No probes, no abductions – just an other-worldly experience with a flawless Cephea cephea jellyfish, slowly pulsing, going wherever the current took us like a leaf on the wind, but for this hour, it travelled with a photographer in tow. When they reach this full-grown size of ~7″ across, they almost always have large chunks bitten out (from predators like rabbitfish, spadefish, etc.), or are in some state of falling apart from the tumble of the waves, but this rare specimen was flawless, and there was no way I was going to leave it until I had finished all the air in my scuba tank. As time went by, we drifted further and further. Since this was while I was living in a very remote part of Papua New Guinea, I might not have had the cajones to continue had I not caught a glimpse of the boat overhead from time to time, as the captain watched my bubbles from above and drifted along with me, no doubt wondering what the heck I was doing so far off course!
For my jellyfish-loving friends, be sure to also check out Skyfall, which shows jellyfish in an inland lake from remote West Papua, and Pulse, which is a split-shot, half underwater, showing the annual moon jellyfish bloom in the clear blue waters of South Florida.
TO PURCHASE ALIEN AS A FINE ART PRINT ON ALUMINUM: While it is somewhat flexible for cropping into different shapes, I do recommend it stay at or close to it’s original ratio of a 3:2 vertical, so think in terms of 30×20″, 45×30″, 60×40″, etc. You can purchase standard sizes here online, but for custom sizing up to 96″ tall, or to visualize a different shape, just reach out to our interior design team, and we’ll walk you through the Virtual Installation process.