Description
LOCATION: Red Sea – Egypt
STORY: I wanted to show the vibrancy and bounty of what a Red Sea coral reef has to offer, so my objective was to show as much color and life in a photograph as possible. Anthias fish school around a mass of colorful Dendronephthya soft corals, situated along the vertical slope of a wall that leads down into the abyss. Since I almost always use a fisheye lens (an extremely wide-angle lens), I’m much close than most people would assume. But the anthias fish tend to be very skittish when they hear the rushing torrent of bubbles from a scuba diver’s exhalations. And the number one rule of scuba diving is – never hold your breath on scuba. So while dive certification agencies smartly created that number one rule with necessary simplicity in mind, from a physics & physiology standpoint, it’s really only relative to ascending. So while I don’t per se hold my breath, I do use what I’d call an extended pause, meanwhile ensuring that I do not ascent at all while doing so – and that allows me to closely approach the fish without them running for shelter in between the corals. And before I do exhale, I keep the fish calm by moving back several feet. Luckily, anthias tent to be either pretty forgiving or pretty forgetful, and if I do accidentally blast bubbles into their view, they’ll usually be back about their normal routine within a few moments, in a game that many divers think is like peek-a-boo.
For similar color and feel, check out two of my other scenic colorful coral reef photographs: Fireworks and the horizontally-oriented Lavish.
For printing, Rainbow Reef is somewhat flexible for cropping away from it’s native ratio of 3:2 (please ask a design consultant to show you a mock-up) and is available in huge art sizes up to a maximum of 250″ tall. You can purchase this luxury wall art online in our standard sizes, but if you’d like to discuss a custom crop or size, please contact one of our design consultants at the art gallery.