The first time I brought a camera underwater, I wasn’t trying to make anything important. I wanted to see what would happen when someone stopped holding a pose and let the water hold them instead.
Something did happen. Weight disappears down there. Fabric stops falling and starts floating. Hair moves like it has its own quiet mind. And people — freed from gravity and from the small tensions we carry on land — soften in a way that’s hard to direct and impossible to fake.
Stillness and movement, at the same time
What I love about the underwater work is that it holds two things at once: stillness and movement. A held breath is calm. The water around it is never quite calm. That tension is where the photographs live.
It’s also why these sessions feel different to sit for. There’s no rushing it. We work slowly, we rest often, and we let the images arrive rather than chase them.
A part of the work, not all of it
I grew up in California, and being near water still feels like home. That comfort, memory, and joy keep returning to the photographs. It is a personal chapter inside a wider body of lifestyle and environmental portraiture—not a theme that has to define everything I make.
On land or in water, the process is the same. We talk, pay attention to the person and the place, and make the photographs from what we discover together.
If any of this resonates, I’d love to hear what you’re imagining. Start a conversation →