Artists Down Under – August 2019

UNDERWATER PHOTO SHOOT

By Ilona Abou-Zolof and Christina Brunton

DOWN UNDER

art ists

Australia and New Zealand

We enjoy doing photo shoots and using our own photos for our artistry. This particular time we decided to do an underwater photo shoot. I had the pool

and we had a keen model, Effie Lmn. We purchased waterproof pouches for our cameras and we tested that they were waterproof by placing tissues

into the pouch and submerging the pouches under water in the bath without the camera. Luckily the tissue remained dry. On the day of the photo

shoot we heard blob, blob, blob as the cameras went underwater in the pouches with lots of bubbles. It was a scary moment at the time, but all was

good and dry.

We had a number of problems -

• Glaring sun so not able to see in the live view screen.


• Although I had treated the pool with chemicals that morning the water had turned from clear to milky. In my enthusiasm to have things perfect I
  may have over treated the pool as it had been clear earlier and it was late afternoon before it cleared up, so in hindsight it would have been better
  to not put any chemicals in the water until after the photo shoot.


• Initially Effie was not able to stay down and was holding air in mouth which made the cheeks look bloated. After some practise we all got used to
  doing the breathing and to make it look normal.

Things we learnt that day -

• Shorter fabric is easier to work with as longer 10 metres fabric was hard to work with.


• Lace umbrella was great to work with underwater as we tried a normal umbrella which broke under water.


• Put pool chemicals in the day before to allow the chemicals to clear.


• Practice makes perfect.

I hope you can learn from our experimentations as our first time doing it was a big learning curve, but it was also fun and had us in stitches laughing

throughout the day.

We are now looking forward to doing it again when the weather is

warmer.

Give it a go if you dare!!!