Below the Waterline

The trip out is part of it. There is a good half hour between the jetty and the anchorage in which nothing happens except wind, and that half hour is exactly when the camera gets set up, the housing gets checked twice and nobody talks about anything. People who go straight into the water film in a hurry afterwards. So we let the crossing run, even though a few seconds of it are all that usually survive.

Below the surface the light is the first thing to change. It no longer comes from above but from everywhere, and anything more than a few metres away loses its outline. At first glance a reef looks like a still life. Two minutes later that is no longer true: something flickers, a shoal turns away as one body, and what was a stone a moment ago pulls itself back in.

Distances are wrong down here as well. Whatever you reach for is an arm's length further away than it looks, and the first shot of every dive of ours is reliably too close.

That is why we move the camera more slowly here than anywhere else. A fast pan smears the colours, a careless fin stirs up sand that costs you the next few minutes. What usually remains is a single long shot in which very little seems to happen — and in which, on the second viewing, you notice how crowded the frame actually is.

The way back is short. Surface, mask up, and above the water there is nothing but a plane again, one you now know the underside of.