World Record Freediving - April 2005

In all honesty I have to admit that I was very skeptical about free diving. Sure I own a copy of the Big Blue, but I wasn't really impressed by the sport, which to be honest I didn't understand. That was until I had the chance to join and photograph the Kirk Krack's Canadian based Performance Freediving Team during their 4 successful World record dives on Grand Cayman in April 2005. That completely changed my opinion. Freediving is awe-inspiring live. The four dives I made with the freedivers were some of the most memorable I have made for years. The other point of interested was that Sky Christopherson and his team were also on the boats filming The Greater Meaning of Water, a new short film based on freediving. Chris Brandson, a familiar face I know from Dive Tech, was on the boat too as he is the Director of Underwater Photography for the project shooting with the new High Def Sony camera in a brand new Gates housing.

So the world records. I don't know that much about freediving so to make sure I get the details right I am going to quote from their website "Two new Constant No-Fins World Records were set by team members Martin Stepanek with a dive to 80m and Mandy-Rae Cruickshank with a dive to 50m. She also set Free Immersion to 74m and Martim made a dive to 136m in Variable Ballast. Dr. George Lopez set a new US national record in Variable Ballast with a dive to 61m." The picture on the left shows Mandy returning from her 74m Free Immersion dive - note that she isn't wearing any fins! Did I mention that free divers are crazy! Anyway I don't know how many other people get to see world records on their first day of watching freediving. It was a bit embarrassing on the boat, because unlike everyone else I wasn't sure of the categories etc. I guess the best place for me was underwater. All I had to do was photograph whoever came down the rope!

Freediving is incredibly dramatic to watch live. The freedivers look so small in the massive expanse of ocean, and so at one with the environment. I am a pretty relaxed scuba diver when I am in the water, but I felt very ungainly next to the sleek and serene freedivers. Luckily the Dive Tech safety divers were much more bulky that I was with their rebreathers so I still felt pretty fish-like! The water in Cayman is incredibly clear and I was down at about 15m most of the time. It still blew my mind how the freedivers would descend slowly passed me, and keep going until they vanished into the blue below. They would stay out of sight still descending for a good minute or so, before they would reappear on their slow trek to the surface. Fantastic.

Photographically it was very varied. I wanted to shoot all the record dives I saw, especially those with the sledge. But you have to be very careful, because if anyone touches a freediver during a record attempt the dive is invalid. And with two AIDA judges watching every dive I was certainly not going to be the one responsible for ruining a record! I was also concerned that my flashguns might disrupt the concentration of the athletes. But apparently they don't notice. Anyway on my first day I still shot in available light, just to be safe! I also wanted to capture the feeling of space, serenity and vulnerability that I felt when watching the dives. To portray these emotions I chose to keep the freedivers as small as I could in the frame to emphasise the big blue that they were exploring. It was great couple of days and I am very grateful to the Performance Freedivers for inviting me to join them.