The old water shot has gotten real tired lately. Like a Hollywood buddy movie, the script is old and familiar: pro surfer is goaded into a big closeout barrel, water photographer with fisheye lens gets as close as he can without being hit, shutter button is pushed, image captured, surfer gets smashed by closeout.
Even the mags are getting clued up - instead of running of every sharp, well-lit closeout barrel we get on the cover, we're opting for more imaginative angles, usually shot from the land, often with a remote flash setup.
Scott Aichner, however, the indisputed champion of the wide-angle water shot, a man for whom capturing the spirit of a big-wave barrel is just about everything, has no plans on letting the water angle die or be relegated to the half-page novelty shot.
For the past five years he's had this idea stewing in his head: what would happen if you had two cameras, both with 15mm fisheye lenses and in the same housing, and you fired them simultaneously?
Eventually, Ike took the idea to Taro Pascual, maker of water housings to the stars, who lives up in the hills behind Pipe. The pair sat on the cement outside Taro's crib and Ike scrawled his idea on a piece of cardboard. Taro liked what he saw. For the next year, Ike and Taro tinkered with the logistics of the housing. It had to be small enough to swim with, it had to be able to fire the two cameras at the same time, had to have a mechanical shutter release and it had to be easy to control in the heat of a 10-foot swell.
The construction of the housing went something like this: build a mould out of foam, work out a way to fit the two cameras inside, fill the completed mould with fibreglass cloth and resin, cut out some holes for the lenses and controls and, well, presto!
"That guy is an artist," says Ike, although he admits that the finished product is a "monster" and that it's "an ordeal to put together."
The results have been spectacular. The following image of Kalle Carranza at Puerto
Escondidio was from Ike's first attempt. But to get the photos from the camera to a useable form requires a little stitchwork in Photoshop. Ike gets the two frames from the two rolls and cuts em together on-screen, removing about 25% of the overlap from the image size.
Seeing it on a flat page is a bit of a misrepresentation of what's happening in the image and Ike imagines building giant viewing boxes where you would walk in and be surrounded by the photo - an idea he got from checking out fringe art galleries in Japan.
With the two cameras working so well, there's even the possiblity of a 360° view, with ports on either side of the housing. Ike thought of that but figured Jt'd be "too much. The 270° degree view is hard enough to grasp. Imagine a full circle. You'd actually see the photographer taking the photo."
One thing that marks Ike is his complete lack of secrecy surrounding the project. Most inventors would recoil at talking candidly about their project, let alone having it photographed. What gives?
"It's pricey, cumbserome and it's like holding onto a parachute in the water - it actually pulls you into the wave. Well, the cat's out of the bag now. Meow! Meow! Meow!"
