Q&A: DR RICHARD SMITH Scuba Diver Editor-at-Large (Australia and New Zealand) Adrian Stacey talks to Dr Richard Smith about nudibranchs, the lure of Aussie diving, and pygmy seahorses PHOTOGRAPHS BY DR RICHARD SMITH
Q: What first attracted you to the oceans? A: I grew up in a fairly land-locked part of the UK and didn’t have much opportunity to visit the ocean growing up. Ever since I was a small child, however, I was absolutely obsessed with nature. I would run around the garden catching bugs, and had a bunch of weird and wonderful pets growing up. Scuba was never something I’d really thought about until a friend learned when I was 16. Suddenly, I discovered how accessible scuba was and I wanted to get underwater and learn more about the ocean’s creatures. My father and I learned to dive in a British quarry before visiting the Great Barrier Reef on the way to see some friends in Melbourne. As soon as I did my first dive on a coral reef, I was hooked. It was lucky we already had the Australia trip booked, as the British quarry dives were very much less inspiring! Q: How did you get started in underwater photography, and what advice would you give to aspiring new photographers? A: I first got into underwater photography when trying to identify nudibranchs. I had been working on a marine conservation project in Indonesia, and was often coming across slugs that I couldn’t identify. I would draw sketches on my slate, but there are so many species-specific details that if I missed one then an ID would be impossible. In fact, I now know that many of them were undescribed, which is why I couldn’t find them in the books! I started underwater photography, to make the ID process easier and it went from there. The advice I would give an aspiring underwater photographer, would be to get plenty of dive experience under your belt before picking up a camera. It inevitably takes a while to get experienced enough in diving to get buoyancy perfect and to have spent some time observing the animals and learning about and feeling comfortable in the underwater environment. I had done 500 dives before properly getting into underwater photography, and I think this allowed me to learn a lot before getting stuck into photography.
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