Featured Photographer
I have been asked how I managed to make a career out of underwater image making . . .
The pursuit began in a studio at York University, when I slapped a wet print on the “wailing wall” and waited for my professor to tell me it was crap. He was brilliant, but often intoxicated, and his words were sometimes hard to hear. I had just used up yet another package of 8x10 photo paper and wondered how I could afford the next one. Another bartending shift? Sell my popasan chair? I had printed the shot over 100 times, carefully burning and dodging the highlights and shadows while making an endless loop through the shadowy doors of the darkroom. Seasonal affective disorder in the long winter days of my Canadian homeland was bad enough, but when the few hours of daylight are spent in a photo lab, your skin morphs to a Vitamin D-deprived shade similar to fish. But this time, as I awaited the torture brought on by his third coffee mug of scotch, he said, “brilliant.” That photo eventually led to a small feature in Photographer’s Who’s Who and the confidence to continue my creative pursuits.
What this experience taught me, was that persistence is the secret route to professional stature. The only way to learn is to shoot a lot. Quality will come through quantity as long as you carefully continue to examine, critique and expand your knowledge.
I was a die-hard film shooter, that felt the purity of emulsion and the joy of the developing tank were the highest forms of art, but a tragic loss at the completion of shooting the Hollywood film, The Cave, launched me into the world of digital photography. As we celebrated the show’s wrap on a secluded beach in Akumal, the security guard for my condo was looting my room of all my cash and photography gear. Although I was living in an overstuffed travel trailer at the time, I scraped together the needed funds to move into digital photography. Ironically, I had been teaching Photoshop editing techniques for well over a decade, but had failed to make the correlation to my darkroom antics. For those that feel that digital photography is somehow a “cheat,” think again. It requires even more dedication to understanding the magic that can be performed in the digital darkroom. I think the most successful photographer’s have a technical understanding of the limits of their camera system as well as a creative understanding of the elements of design. Everything else comes down to practice, experimentation and the willingness to go to places that are fresh and new.
Jill Heinerth teaches many aspects of technical diving for several training agencies. Additionally, she is an award-winning photojournalist and independent filmmaker. Her new book Digital Underwater Photography will be released in early 2010 and will be available through her website www.IntoThePlanet.com.
Photos © Jill Heinerth