Mark Lightfoot's photostream  

[Click photos to fully enjoy.]

Thank-you for viewing my photography and for leaving your kind comments.

I'm an avid diver and underwater photographer. I also dabble in HD video and occasionally do freelance writing jobs. I am pro-marine conservation and restoration. Currently, I'm diverging away from civilization towards a simple quiet life abounding with warm sun, palm trees, papaya, coconuts, lizards and, of course, warm oceans to dive in.


[Click photos to fully enjoy.]

As you can see, I'm in love with the underwater world. When people ask what I do, people who don't dive themselves, they are sometimes mystified as to what the big deal is. What's it like to dive? What do you see down there? Why do you do it? What does it feel like?

I think that only a fantastic poet, such as E.E. Cummings, could possibly emote through words the surreal experience of immersion I know so well. I can only hope that some of my photographs help demystify this submerged world and recreate some of the wonderment, the beauty and the bizarreness of the world where life began.

Enjoy the photos - let me know what you think and which ones you like best by clicking on "Favorite".



[Click photos to fully enjoy.]

So what is it like to dive you ask? A question that cannot properly be answered with words. If I were to stumble through an attempt, I might say:

When descending into the sea, you find yourself immersed in an alien world, perception is altered - the umbilical cord is cut and you are born into an alternate reality. You find yourself untethered from gravity and float, as in flight, over exotic landscapes and amongst a baffling diversity of extraordinary creatures, many radically shaped and colored and all very busy living their odd lives. The slower you go and the closer you look, the more you see. As you slow down and integrate into the environment, the creatures reward you by ignoring you and carrying on with their normal behavior - behavior unlike anything you've see on land.


[Click photos to fully enjoy.]

Although the fundamental principles of survival persist, unfathomably, sea creatures tend to actively work together, prey and predators alike, in a broad symbiosis rarely witnessed on land. Colonies of coral work together to build mountains which become home to most creatures. Smaller fish clean the bodies, gills and even inside the mouths of larger fish constantly. Corals are cleaned constantly of life draining algae by a variety of fish. All this under the watchful eye of sharks which patrol for and remove the weak and diseased.

When immersed in the sea, I lapse into a meditative state but with an heightened awareness. Psychologically and physiologically, I transform. The world I came from, along with any of it's troubles, ceases to exist. After a dive, a sense of euphoria lingers, often for the rest of the day. Nothing compares.


[Click photos to fully enjoy.]

Photography: The challenge of underwater photography is sublime and requires extensive preparation and post dive routines. Cameras, like human beings, are not designed to go into the water. Special housings, lens ports, lights and specialized hardware are as much of a requirement as are a scuba tank and regulator to the diver. Water itself is a much different medium for light than is air. Water absorbs light leaving dull colorless photos. The deeper you go, the darker and more gray it gets. Special filters and/or powerful artificial lighting and digital post-processing are required to keep or return familiar colors to a photo. For the photographer, not only do they need to be on top of the diving aspect including monitoring dive equipment and overall safety but it most be done in conjunction of....

(incomplete)