Author: Claudio Di Manao
For some time now, on the Red Sea diving boats, we've become accustomed to some strange presences. They're captivating women with wild hair, or solitary men with dark charm. They dive alone. They're not clients. And they're not even guides. They observe us through enormous, bulging eyes, eyes with strange handles on the sides. (No, this time it's not about Martians.) They're videographers.
What do they do? What do they want? They take care of our memories. They capture on videotape or CD what happens while we're in the water, reassuring all our friends that we were really there in the Red Sea! Maybe even when the manta ray was passing by.
They're a species greatly feared by divemasters. They say they distract clients, that they do strange things. In fact, to get a film worthy of the 'Antibes Festival', videographers are willing to perform acrobatics beyond the physical and physiological limits set by computers and tables (to the delight of instructors who have just finished explaining to their students that underwater you don't go up and down or hold your breath). "But that one?" they ask, rightly – "Um…that one is resistant to nitrogen. You can think about yourselves!" Yeah, what can you say to him?
Underwater, they often improvise strange routes, which annoy the guides. There's nothing, I assure you, that attracts a group of divers more than "that guy over there" finning away from the others: "Did he see something?!" And everyone, absolutely everyone, chases him out into the blue, or to the forbidden 40 meters. This too is true. "We've been waiting for you for a quarter of an hour! Was it really necessary to take a picture of that clown in the anemone?" Or: "You all have the best digital technology, why don't you 'doctor' the images a bit instead of bothering us guides?" I've often heard divemasters protest like this.
But I've also heard videographers complain about divemasters: "They left me in the water! They only realized I wasn't there when a customer asks: Where's my video?" Not everyone loves them. But maybe it's also because they collect evidence, evidence of poor trim, evidence of some reckless fin kicks that harm the coral, evidence of some 'carelessness' committed by customers and divemasters, evidence of bad dives, poorly conducted, in barren areas, in short, heartless!
Think about it, everyone, clients and divemasters, we're all in this together. Let's try not to end up on certain TV shows, at least. Let's try.
As for me, it was a videographer, Fabio, who taught me so many things. He'd show me the dive through his own eyes. He'd tell me about the right time for the light at Ras Zatar, or that if you look at soft corals against the light, you can see their transparency.
"I'll stand behind the snappers, and you lead the group to the middle, so the video shows the divers surrounded by fish." Or: "There's a beautiful gorgonian at 13 meters, I'll wait there, have them all file past, and I'll film them." So, by playing with the movie, I learned the dive sites and the resulting images were truly beautiful, not just electronic ones, but images for the eyes and the mind that people still remember. And there's even a video to prove it: you were down there. VHS or DVD?
Claudio Di Manao
From: “Red Sea Species, the Videographers”, The Magazine, http://www.goredsea.com/ , n° 15, October 2003
If you want to find out more about Sharm, don't miss Claudio's work...
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