Usually, someone asks me about how I did a service or a photos. I decided to realize on my blog a serie of posts where I’m going to tell you the behind the scenes of my most curious photos.

It’s a way to give some information to who’s starting to deal with photography and a way to narrate what you can’t see from the photo. If one of my pictures particularly move you, don’t esitate to ask me how I took it.

The first picture I’m going to tell you about is the one I took between Portovenere and Palmaria. A photography backstage in Portovenere.

This picture was in my mind for long time, I was always fascinated by the photos where you can see up and down the water. Usually, to take this kind of pictures, we use traditional cameras inside plastic shells.

Sadly, this kind of things cost a lot of money and it’s senseless to buy if and use it just twice a year.

So, I thought to rent it, but I didn’t find anyone in this area, so I decided to use a very common object: a GoPro.

The camera I use: GoPro Hero 5

The GoPro Hero 5 is perfectly ready to go underwater, but if you want to see both the sky and the water in your photo, you need a dome. It’s a plastic sphere which creates an air room between the lens and the water. You can find it for a very good price on Amazon and they are perfect to take pictures in the sea and play with your GoPro. Sadly, I had a very high object outisde the water and I had to modify one of it.

To do it, I used a plastic semi-sphere took from an old lamp in my garden and I fixed it on the dome in a very handmade way: silicone and scotch.

Everything was ready for the dive

A long time ago, I did agonistic swimming and for lot of years I had a passion for apnoea fishing, so I’m not scared of diving. But suddenly, when I fell off the rubber boat I saw something it was not going like we thought. Under the couple, there was a big herd of jellyfishes.
Fortunately, the flow took them away in a few minutes.

Always do it in security conditions:

• possibly where the bride can touch her feet to the ground
• Far from the meals and where the water is lukewarm
• The sea is better than the rivers
• Avoid to put her in the water with very heavy dresses
• You must have a person who can help the bride if she needs help

For this photo, we dove in a 20 meters water and for this reason the dress you can see in the photo is not the bridal dress but one lighter dress which permitted the bride to swim.

After the jellyfishes, I finally get the eye on the camera and I started to take pictures. The first ones were disappointing, the rough sea didn’t permit to have both the elements, the sea and the sky.

In this case, your mind couldn’t work well: you built the scene, got two boats to take pictures, you put all the effort, the result is so close but you can’t afford it.