Photographs by David Dubile: the world on the surface and under water

David Dubilet, known as a pioneer in underwater photography, skillfully combines the mysterious underwater world and more familiar life on the surface in one picture.

Dubile is recognized as one of the world's leading underwater photographers, his articles have been regularly published by National Geographic for decades.

David Dubile discovered his passion for exploring the world around him as a child. He grew up on the coast of New Jersey in the Caribbean. Once in the camp, as a punishment, he was sent to collect sticks under the pier, equipped with a mask, and life under water fascinated him. In addition, when he was twelve years old, his father helped him make a protective box for his Brownie Hawkeye camera from an anesthesiologist's bag (his father worked in a hospital). The elastic chamber from the artificial respiration device was docked with an ordinary oval mask. With such a device, young David began to dive, taking the first pictures.

Dubile published his first story as a teenager and began collaborating with National Geographic in 1971. After five decades and 75 stories, he still considers every dive a discovery. "I'm still looking for the elusive junction of the two worlds and continue to push the photographic boundaries to see where we can achieve technological advances," he says.

The idea of the Dubile "Two Worlds" project arose a long time ago. According to him, he always admired the surface of the sea "as a door to a hidden world."

This is how experiments on combining half images in one SIM card happened. For a Tanner, it's a thrill to know that a person on the surface has no idea about the fascinating and rich life that can be seen right under the water.

In 2021, David Dubile released a book-photo album "Two Worlds: Above and Below the Sea". It included photographs taken throughout Dubile's underwater career, from Papua New Guinea to Grand Cayman Island, from the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean to the tropical Great Barrier Reef. The photographer captured rare sea creatures, corals, plant life and a unique underwater landscape. According to the author's idea, this helps him to draw attention to the important problems of climate change and the preservation of marine life.

Despite extensive experience, creating such images is laborious. Dubile uses various Nikon cameras in SEACAM underwater boxes, which are equipped with a number of Nikkor wide-angle lenses behind a 9.5-inch optical glass super dome. The dome corrects the 33% underwater magnification and distributes the boundary layer of the surface along the curvature of the dome.

When Dubile takes a picture, he has to kneel or stand very carefully. Sometimes it stays half on the surface of the water and half under water, illuminating the lower half of the frame with two or more flashes of Sea&Sea YS 250.

The most difficult aspect of this type of work is to find two attractive objects in one frame to illustrate the essence of the place in which the Tanner is shooting.

No matter how difficult underwater photography is, Dubile has no plans to stop and hopes that his project will reconcile people with the sea. His work is an invitation to enter the boundless world, "to see, learn, explore, connect with the oceans and protect them."