greener on the other side

George dreams of pools

Gary Floatus on Viewbug

I've entered this picture of Gary the Rockstar doing a floatus on Viewbug



It can win me one of them interesting light field camera thingies, for which they don't have underwater housing yet but could be fun anyway. So if you have a moment, please do click below and 'like' the hell out of the pic:

Depth Photo Contest

St Daan of the Bubble Rings

I might be slightly obsessed with bubble rings



-but can you blame me? They're awesome; they make grey days bright



they're very comfortable to sit on



they help you with framing



they give you something to aim for



and they're excellent hula hoops



so since there's a vacancy -i checked- i'm declaring myself patron saint of bubble rings



blessed be those who blow rings:



see also

the deep line

Cornelis Verhoeven, violence as inspiration

56 years ago today, my dad defended his thesis Symbology of the foot and got his doctorate. He always celebrated this day, more so than his birthday, so i try to honor this day by putting up a translation on his blog. This year i picked a passage from a book i've been trying to translate, 'Against violence', which is a magnificent brain breaker of an essay on a very worthy topic.

"In all its subtle and complicated morphology violence lies like a dark stain in our existence, collectively, individually and especially in the obscure transition areas between them. And it wouldn’t be violence, wouldn’t be ascendency, if that stain was merely put there by us and could be removed at our discretion. That’s why it is good to contemplate one’s powerlessness before speaking too strongly about violence."

http://cornelisverhoeven.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/violence-as-inspiration/

dog surfing

i knew dogs could swim





even with a ball in their mouth





i never knew they could surf, though

chat en oeuf

Estrella Navarro Holm sets Mexican freediving record

During the AIDA team world champioships in Villefranche-sur-Mer, freediver and model Estrella Navarro Holm set a new Mexican record Constant Weight with a dive to 58 meters.

I was there to shoot footage for a documentary about extreme sports -Attention, a life in extremes- that'll come out next year, but they were not going to use this shot, so i figured i'd put it on youtube; it's a beautiful dive.



if youtube is being a bit of an asshole, here's the vimeo version:

Estrella Navarro Holm sets Mexican freediving record from Daan Verhoeven on Vimeo.

underwater dance off

In between takes on the underwater realm we messed about a bit, as you might have noticed from a previous post. One of the cast, the ridiculously fit Patrick Bauristhene, is a professional dancer, so we did a bit of monkeying in front of our underwater cameramen. Turns out that the crew had done the same damn thing, so now we have a bit of a dance-off, a battle of sorts, on our hands.

THE GREAT UNDERWATER DANCE OFF. from Realm Pictures on Vimeo.

Good thing Pat was there, i look more like boiling spaghetti than like a dancer. Sam does a mean body pump, too

Chepstow man and the UK freedive team

Right after becoming an international movie star -or extra on an indie series of shorts, depending on whether you want to be realistic about it- i was happy to be back behind the camera, this time to photograph the British Freediving Team as they warmed up for the World Championship in Nice by freezing their butts off in the beautiful but arctic blue green of Chepstow



where the upside down man oversees his domain



to have the lovely view of George going down



and Liv Liv coming up



i figure he must have a good job, hanging under that platform, seeing all kinds of freedivers doing all kinds of things





in all kinds of light





plus he gets lots of love