Underwater photography

Swanage

I told you a few posts back that Andre started his underwater photography specialisation. Saturday he did his ocean dives at Swanage. The photographer he did the course with is Keith Lyall. Have a look at his website for some really great underwater photos. Also see his partner, Jo's, underwater videos on her website. They inspired us both to do more underwater photography and video.

Andre with the camera- photo by Keith Lyall

We got up at 3.15am. I packed yoghurt and muesli for breakfast and made sandwiches for lunch. We left home at 4am. It's a two hour drive if you leave this early, any later in the day it will take longer with traffic and even longer if you have to wait for the ferry. We went the long way round as the ferry doesn't wake up as early as we do and we anyway prefer to keep driving rather than sitting in a queue waiting to get on the ferry. We did it once before here.

Swanage

We arrived at Swanage pier at 6am and ate our breakfast while waiting for the gates to the pier to open at 7am. There were already about 5 cars waiting in line ahead of us. There's only limited parking spaces available on the pier and it fills up quickly. It helps the guys to not have to drag all their heavy diving gear too far and it's nice for me to be able to sit in the car while they get ready and are in the water. It was freezing cold early in the morning so I was very happy to have a warm car to stay in! The sun did come out at times during the day and it warmed up a bit, but still far from bikini weather!

Ready for their first dive. Drysuits against
the cold water.

Their first dive was off the pier. This next picture was taken from where the car was parked and those steps you see is where they enter the water so I could really watch them from the car.

Swanage pier

For the second dive they took a boat out to a nearby wreck. Best to click on the first picture which will enlarge it and then keep clicking to see them all better. To return to the blog click outside the picture on the black section or click the X in the top right corner. I've added a few of the photos Andre took below during the two dives.

Loading dive gear onto the boat to go to the
wreck site.

A tompot blenny

sea anemone

Part of the wreck, the Fleur de Lys

Nudibranch eggs

scorpion fish