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Conceptual Underwater Photography Project - Jason Heller

By Jason Heller, May 19, 2008 @ 02:00 AM (EST)

I've been holding this project a secret for a while now, but enough people have heard about it or seen it for me to want to formally share this with our readers. The following images are part of an ongoing series of conceptual images that Wendy & I have been making for various uses including advertising and editorial purposes.

This particular part of the series was shot in Guatemala, while we were on a shoot for the tourism board. Beyond all the beautiful topside shots, we wanted to create a unique set of images that made use of the medium of water.

One of the concepts we were trying to produce was that of the local culture entwined in the natural landscape. Of course we wanted to include underwater shots, but the visibility in the area we shot was not too great because it had rained for several days prior. We worked around it by limiting the amount of underwater negative space in the shots, and for the most part we were able to accomplish what we needed. We also shot some images for our own project, which are the images with all the masks and make-up.

Shooting on assignment in uncontrolled environments adds a lot of pressure on the photographer and the models. After all, you must deliver results! Fortunately, we had a crew helping us set-up, carry equipment, and herding curious tourists away from the"sets"

The water was absolutely freezing. I was shooting in a wetsuit and on scuba, but the models had to deal with both cold water, holding their breath and looking natural underwater. A very difficult feat!

Although this image tells a great story, you can see the challenge of the poor visibility and gray skies that we had to deal with. We only had a few days in this remote area and had to play the hand that we were dealt. All in all we delivered the results we needed to and even had time to shoot some images for our own projects.

This is just a sample of the type of projects that Wendy and I are working on. We rarely share our own work (other than in an editorial context of course) because we're always working hard to cover the world of underwater imaging products and events and featuring the work of all the other fabulous underwater photographers out there. Well, I hope you enjoyed the images and a little insight into one of our projects. Feel free to leave comments for us below...

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