Expanding my photographic horizons

To the underwater world. I was thinking the other day how cool it would be to be able to really learn to become proficient in ALL genres of photography. I feel confident in portraiture, weddings, and commercial work - but there are other areas that I really haven't taken the time to explore. Why would a portrait photographer want to learn about underwater photography? Why not! I think that when we challenge ourselves to learn something outside our comfort zone, we inevitably learn something that we can apply to our everyday work. Besides that, I love scuba diving so it's seems a natural thing to lug my camera along too. And lug it will be. I just got an Ikelite underwater housing for my Nikon D300s and it's an amazing piece of work. A big, bulky, massive piece of work! Good thing it will be weightless in the water :-)

I was fortunate to find a guy in Maui, where I'm headed next week, who is a wonderful underwater photographer and instructor/guide. Mike Roberts helped me to pick out the right housing, flash, and accessories and we scheduled a private workshop while I'm there. I'm really excited to be able to take a class myself for a change! Mike has been really great helping me plan for the trip and I'll of course post some updates after we have our dive/photo class, but I'm confident it's going to be a great experience. You can see some of his wonderful work here. It's beautifully vivid, artfully lit and composed, and just has that "Hawaiian" feeling to them. Mike also has a website for his workshop business here.

Where else could you expand your photographic horizons? Skydiving anyone??

This is the Ikelite housing I got for my D300s. Mike is also an Ikelite dealer, so you can order stuff from him and it costs the same as most online retailers, but you get personal advice and service with it.