Underwater

Engineering companies are always good places to photograph. There's always lots of 'stuff' that makes a photographer's job easy, big machines, big cranes, big lumps of metal. When I was contacted by a company who wanted to show their facility for pressure testing industrial valves, I knew there would be scope for something creative.

The valve was from a North Sea oil rig and the test was to simulate the working conditions where the valves are installed to evaluate the procedures of maintenance but in a controlled environment. It was explained that the testing would take place underwater in a tank full of water at 4 degrees and there would be workmen in the water with the valve.

As I would be photographing during a live test, the clients initial expectation was for me to remain around the perimeter and photograph the activity as an observer, but as soon as he had mentioned a water tank, I had other ideas. My mind was already wondering if my camera would fit inside a small fish tank and how I could ensure it didn't sink with my camera inside and how would the test look with the water half way up the lens.

The client was saying things about how he wasn't paying for a new camera if it got wet but I was already thinking about blocks of polystyrene as ballast and methods of firing the camera while I was holding a fish tank in a much larger tank of cold water.



The final solution was quite straightforward. A proper waterproof housing would have been prohibitively expensive for this exercise but with only a few tests in the kitchen sink, I was ready to go. The camera fitted nicely into the fish tank and I placed a towel underneath just in case there were any splashes. A cable release was taped to the lid of the tank so I could fire the camera with a thumb and at the same time be holding the tank steady with both hands. I added a small spirit level as I wouldn't be looking through the camera while photographing and remote lights were triggered via a PocketWizard which was also placed in the fish tank.



As with photographing any live event, there were a lot of photographs that didn't work but there were two that stood out above all of the others. A nice horizon line of water, a good dynamic stance of the workers and enough of the underwater valve was visible to explain the situation. The photographs are currently being used by the company as promotion of their testing facilities.