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| "I was always interested in photography," explains Joe Koppelman, 46, of his introduction to the joys of underwater shooting, "but specifically I made friends with a photographer who was learning to dive, and he was kind of a mentor." Koppelman, who admits that his first love was diving, was thrilled at being able to capture the images he'd seen as a diver and has been shooting underwater ever since, some 20 years now. He's even carved out something of a specialty for himself. "I do all kinds of underwater photography," says the lifelong New Yorker, "but given my location and the fact that this area doesn't feature a lot of natural life, my particular niche seems to be Northeastern wreck photography." He's shot numerous wrecks, including the Andrea Doria, the Italian luxury liner that sank off Nantucket, MA in 1956. He’s also discovered the unique limitations of his given profession, one of the most challenging being that it’s impossible to change a roll of film underwater. To compensate, Koppelman almost always dives with two cameras. "In the Northeast, each dive is a huge commitment, and I want to generate more images than I can with one camera and one roll of film," he explains. His camera of choice is the Nikonos III, an underwater model that Nikon developed, which he’s found to be durable, even with the kind of abuse the camera takes underwater. In addition, the Nikonos models have no electronics, which helps them survive the cold saltwater. "I’ve been mounting the Nikonos III with a wide angle lens on top of a housing with a macro lens," he says of his set-up, "and I'll maybe use 60 mm macro or 105 mm macro lenses. Then I use Ikelite strobes, one attached to each camera. Depending on which camera I’m using, one will act as a slave to the other one; that way either camera is illuminated by two strobes.” This unique set-up gives him more options in the limited underwater environment, mainly the ability to shoot both wide-angle or extreme macro on the same dive. “Very often I’ll photograph extremely small creatures that might be half an inch long, but on the same dive I'll get interested in something large, like a reef or a wreck,” he says. "To be able to shoot both gives me a whole range of flexibility." Koppelman prefers Fujichrome 400 because it's designed to be processed for low light conditions, and he finds that especially helpful in Northeast waters, where clear light is hard to come by. He tends to shoot mostly in color, especially when in tropical waters, but does on occasion shoot black and white. "It's very interesting because wrecks are big and gray and are much more graphic than they are colorful," he explains. "So sometimes, even when I'm shooting color, I'm thinking more about shapes than color." Koppelman's work has been featured in many dive magazines, including Skin Diver and UnderWater. His photos can also be seen in numerous books, such as Florida Shipwrecks by Daniel Berg (Dimensions, 1991) and The Technical Diving Handbook by Gary Gentile (Dimensions, 1998). TO READ MORE ABOUT JOE KOPPELMAN PICK UP THE DECEMBER ISSUE OF INCREDIBLE PHOTOGRAPHY |
