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A Portrait Shot 30M Under Toxic Water With A Stuffed Cormorant

Jul 1, 2015 by Udi Tirosh 1 Comment

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VonWong's Underwater Fisherman in collaboration with Ballentines

VonWong’s Underwater Fisherman in collaboration with Ballentines

What if a big company approached you with the following suggestion, how would you react?

We love what you do and want to support you as part of our Stay True campaign. Is there anything you’d like to do that you’ve never done before?

when Ballantines approached Benjamin Von Wong with such a suggestion, he reacted by upping his underwater shooting game. He wanted to “recreate the iconic scene of a young Chinese cormorant fisherman hard at work on a bamboo raft – shot 30 meters underwater in a cenote just above a toxic layer of hydrogen sulphide“.

Ben explains the motivation for creating this image:

Traditional culture as a whole, is something that is inexorably fading with time. I wanted to create a piece that would immortalize a piece of my own culture – the iconic cormorant fisherman. By placing him directly above an underwater river, within this portal that was believed to lead to the mayan underworld, seemed like the perfect way to bid farewell to a proud tradition

That is not a trivial task, and both Ben and the team at Ballantines knew that it is a job that would live or die by the crew assembled. And the crew had a top notch commercial diver, a free diving model, several safety divers, and a film crew. A location was scouted, a sketch was prepared and the production started.

benjamin-wong-underwater-01

Aside the obvious added work of shooting underwater, shooting underwater also poses challenges on the gear, communications and time to shoot fronts.

As far as gear, the team used 8 Orcalights (6 secured to a plexiglass lighting rig and 2 hand held), and a D800 + 14-24mm lens secured in a Nauticam case.

Each shooting cycle was only 2 minutes long as this is how long each freedive lasted, so the team went through a pre-planned modeling routine and communicated using a dive slate and hand gestures.

VonWong's Underwater Fisherman in collaboration with Ballentines

VonWong’s Underwater Fisherman in collaboration with Ballentines

You can see the full behind the scenes in the video below

[Toxic underwater portrait – 30m underwater for Ballantine’s Scotch Whisky | Von Wong]

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Filed Under: Inspiration Tagged With: Ballentines, Benjamin Von Wong, underwater photography

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.net

About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

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Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

Alex Baker: from diyphotography.netAlex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

David Williams: from diyphotography.netDave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

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