Like many photogs I have been photographing the world around me on and off since I can remember. My first world was far from any ocean: a life amidst the woods, rocky pastures, cows and other critters of a New England dairy farm. That imprint remains despite later decades in cities as a military officer and civil servant. You can take the girl off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the girl. So, here with fish and mantas are some of the cows, cats, sheep, and other ordinary but lovable critters to have crossed my path over the years.
One never knows the many forms angels can take. It was a one-time controlling, spirit-crushing boss at work who I thank for driving me to find something creative and validating outside the workplace. My workplace woes somehow moved me to combine my two separate hobbies of scuba and photography – which together transported me to whole new cosmos.
In oceanic encounters since – from Australia to Thailand, from Alaska to Papua New Guinea – my passion has grown from diving into these sentient creatures’ stories, understanding the primal connections we share with them, and seeing the often tragic plights to which human appetite has consigned them.
Through my photos, these creatures become travelers to the land of humans. Beautiful, bizarre, fragile, and necessary – they are ambassadors for species and realms that are profoundly linked with us in origin and fate. They are appealing for our empathy and compassion. They might say that taking care not to lose begins with appreciating –from the vantage of our planet and its other denizens – who we are, and what we have.
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I now use a Nikon D7200. Underwater, I add a subal housing and Sea and 2 Sea YS-D1 strobes. My go-to lenses are Tokina 10 – 17, Sigma 17-70, and Nikon 60.
I am not much prone to photographic competition but over the years have gained some recognition through venues as publication in Nature’s Best Magazine, honors at Underwater Photography. Com, EPIC, and Beneath the Sea international photo competitions for marine life and conservation categories (several), Ocean Conservancy’s 40th Anniversary image, and most recently in late 2014, a first place award for wildlife at the metro DC Nature Visions photo expo.
Gloria Freund, McLean VA