Marine Life: Black & White Gallery

I've always loved black and white photography. When I was a teenager, my father and I built a darkroom in the basement, and together we learned to develop and print black and white film. We were guided by my uncle (one of dad's brothers) and a few books, but otherwise we were basically self-taught. Later in life, when I took up scuba diving in my late teens, I eventually drifted back to photography, and naturally began trying to take photos underwater. Those were the days of film and Nikonos cameras--I rapidly learned that it wasn't easy to take good pictures underwater, especially in the cold, murky waters off Long Island and New Jersey! But I was fascinated by the shipwrecks we dived and their history, so I stuck with it and eventually began taking a few decent photos after learning a lot, and wasting a lot of film. In order to try and capture the 'big picture' of shipwrecks, rather than just the details, I eventually returned to black and white film, using just ambient light and no strobes. Then along came digital, revolutionizing photography, and as these wonderful cameras evolved so did their low-light capability; today the high ISO capability in nearly every camera on the market far surpasses what was achievable on film. Even though I was mostly interested in shipwrecks, if you spend enough time in the ocean you see a lot of marine life, and I took to photographing it as well. Today, as the shipwrecks we dive inevitably succumb to the destructive forces of time and nature, I find myself more and more interested in the marine life I see than the crumbling rubble piles that were once ships. Below is a gallery of some of my favorite marine life images that I've taken over the years, presented in my favorite medium--black and white.