I recently brought a little Kodak "Water and Sport" 35mm camera to Roatan, Honduras, a small island off the coast in the Caribbean. I bought this camera for $18 dollars off of amazon(ick), knowing that I was going to be scuba diving while in Roatan. While the island has so much more to offer, its reef is well known in diver circles aka I heard it mentioned once by someone who read about it on a blog.
I brought this little camera because I wanted to capture what I saw under the waves, to take home some of those feelings. On the other hand, I've seen dozens of divers bring GoPros or full underwater housed digital cameras (I've thought about buying one of these set ups but they are more expensive than my professional grade camera!). Folks who bring these seem more focused on getting the perfect picture, or filming everything they saw, than the experience itself. The reason I love diving so much is getting lost in those moments, the wonder of exploration. It's alien down there and metaphors alone fail to encapsulate what it's like.
The camera I brought only had 23 photos it could take. This artificial scarcity helped me live in the moment. I can't capture everything, therefore, I only capture those really special moments. Most folks can probably handle having a GoPro or something similar and still enjoy the experience but I know myself. This limit was important. It made me really consider what was worth capturing and what wasn't. It stopped me from taking a thousand photos but let me bring back a few moments I could share. Most of the time, I forgot I was carrying the little thing around.
This little film camera is rated to go 50ft underwater and by the end of the trip I had gone on plenty of dives that went 60+ feet deep. After my second to last dive, I was pretty sure I saw water inside the plastic shell. Did the film get wet? Did any of my photos survive? I had no idea.
Fun fact: X-ray machines can irrevocably damage undeveloped film. Another fun fact: TSA agents don't have to deal with a lot of film anymore. This means deep levels of confusion as I hand folks a hunk of plastic and beg them not to x-ray it. It especially means that the Airport workers in Honduras who did not speak English combined with my poor Spanish nearly spelled defeat. The security line was over a 100 people long and my partner Abby and I had already skipped most of it because everyone else on our plane had already finished boarding. She went through first, exasperated and worried, only to turn around and see me trying to negotiate with the staff. They wanted me to take a picture of them(this is what they said although I doubt it's what they meant). The people behind me were getting impatient and I felt the pressure. Eventually we can to an agreement where they tried to take a photo with it, saw it was empty and just let me through.
Diving is the most deeply isolating experience I've ever had. Being unable to speak and floating around this foreign world. Yet it is also this wonderful shared moment with your fellow divers. Once you surface you can't help but gush about all the amazing and crazy things you saw.
Did you see the barracuda had a hook in his mouth?
That turtle was almost invisible while it was sleeping among the coral.
I was staring at a fish before noticing the huge spotted eel right beside me!
Can't wait to be underwater again.
- LWJ