Diving with free divers (and trying to photograph them!)

Sorry for my poor record in keeping this blog up-we are very busy at Capernwray with courses runing just about every day-and my laptop refuses to work underwater!

On Friday 26th, David Hack and I went off for a photo dive. It was some time since David took his camera underwater, so the idea was to work out a few kinks and get some time in underwater. We were joined for the latter portion of the dive by Rosie Hancock, who I had been doing the AIDA course with. I have long wanted to get some good images of free divers underwater-they look so good! Anyway, I found that getting the shots was more dificult than I thought. The best angles seem to be straight up-which causes all sorts of problems with exposure! I was trying to use the strobes to light Rosie, and expose for the background, but with a 1.4 x teleconvertor on, was finding that I had to back off to far for the strobes to light her up, or if I turned the strobes power up too much, lots of backscatter. Ok so learning point is to shoot with the 10-17mm Tokina, without the convertor off!

AIDA 2 star free diving Part 2

Rosie and I underwent the second part of our AIDA free diving course yesterday. We met Steve in the classroom at Capernwray, and sat the exam. Whilst it was not too taxing, it did check quite thoroughly whether I had been listening or not!

We then went into open water. We got weighted correctly and initially, it was just pulling down the line to 6m, and getting the feel for head first descents. Given my emphasis on good trim and body positioning on scuba, descending upside down and deliberately limiting my field of view felt very weird. We then progressed to 12m descents, I delayed equalising too long and had a few ear problems. These descents were "swimming" ones-not using the line to pull down, and duck diving from the surface. We both (I think) were finding that there was quite a bit of task loading. Trying to co-ordinate good diving style, finning technique, equalisation, "breathe ups" and body position during ascent and descent meant that I was unable to clear my mind and I think that this somewhat affected my performance.

Session 2 involved working up to some more depth. Rosie got down to over 17m, and I got to 15.5. I had a "good" learning experience when I tried to equalise, and some how managed to get some water in my mouth. Rather than do the obvious, and spit it out(!) I got a bit freaked out! Steve was with me (and actually supported my airway) so there was no risk as such, but it did spook me. It took a few dives for me to re-gain my confidence. Lastly, we looked at dealing with sambas (blackouts) at the surface-rescue techniques.

I was a little disapointed by my performance to be honest, and found that the clarity that came so easilly in the pool eluded. This may have been due to task loading, I don't think it was due to confidence in water. Once again though, Steve and team did a great job! Our final session is next Wednesday and am looking forward to it!