Underwater Photography Quotes

Jacques Cousteau, the last man to see Jimmy Hoffa. Never got a dinner!

I like underwater life.

I have an underwater camera just in case I crash my car into a river, and at the last minute I see a photo opportunity of a fish that I have never seen.

See, I've always seen Jacques Cousteau as a hero, mate. He's a legend - like my dad, just a legend. And so what he did for conservation in the '60s through the '70s was just phenomenal.

If you're going to make a lot of films about a particular group of animals, you might as well pick one that's fairly common. And octopus are: they live in all the oceans. They also live deep. And I can't say octopus are responsible for my really strong interest in getting in subs and going deep, but whatever the case, I like that.

I had wanted to place the Eye-in-the-Sea at an oasis on the bottom of the ocean, in some site rich with life that was likely to be patrolled by large predators. The first time I got to test the camera at such a place was in 2004, in the north end of the Gulf of Mexico, at an amazing location called the brine pool.

I don't have to tell you folks about scuba diving. So, that'll save some time.

Russell James asked me to shoot underwater. He tied my feet under the water. I don't know how many feet - maybe five, six meters. He tied me underwater and I had no air. Somebody had a tube, and they were giving me some oxygen, but I couldn't really see anything. Everything was blurry. I'm waiting for the oxygen - that was the craziest thing.

Most people catch them breaching from the surface when they're shooting out of the water. I have them breaching from underwater in a 16-time sequence, a shark leaving the water and then reentering the water.

I filmed underwater for two days in the open ocean with dolphins.

I'd like to see the giant squid. Nobody has ever seen one. I could tell you people who have spent thousands and thousands of pounds trying to see giant squid. I mean, we know they exist because we have seen dead ones. But I have never seen a living one. Nor has anybody else.

Most whale photos you see show whales in this beautiful blue water - it's almost like space.

I'm obsessed with great white sharks. And I want to dive into the coral of the Great Barrier Reef.

For a photographer, sharks are a stirring subject, possessing a perfect blend of grace and power. They have been sculpted by evolution and are ideally suited for whichever ecosystem they inhabit, from coral reefs to the open ocean.

I would give the cameras to the kids in the swimming pools and they would play with them, and then I would collect them and we would upload it. If you're in the process, you're there.

I have photographed sharks in waters around the globe, and I always want more and yearn to peer deeper into their world. To feed my passion and to raise awareness, I developed a story about sharks for 'National Geographic' magazine.

I had this vision of shooting a great white in the studio with all the edge lights I use for movie posters. I knew that I couldn't bring the great white to the studio, so I had to bring the studio to the great white.

I have been blessed to realize my dream of becoming an underwater photojournalist, but with that, I feel an obligation and sense of urgency to share what I have seen with others.

I love storytelling, I love being a visual person, and it just made perfect sense to be an underwater photographer and explore the ocean and work with scientists.

The Bahamas has mangrove nurseries, coral reefs, shallow sea grass beds, and deep oceanic trenches - all perfect ecosystems for sharks. Photographing multiple shark species in exquisite water was the assignment I had dreamed about from the start.

I typically shoot underwater with my regular camera in an underwater housing, and then I usually have two big strobes that I use to light. But with whales, you're not going to be able to really light a 45-foot subject. Your strobes are only effective for maybe five or six feet underwater.