AD 2017 Q4

[
IMAGING
SHOOTER
[
CAPTIONS AND PHOTOS BY TANYA G. BURNETT
INTRODUCTION BY STEPHEN FRINK
SHOOTER: TANYA G. BURNETT
FROM DIVE OPS TO PHOTO OPS
Underwater photographers and dive
operators live in symbiosis. We
photographers couldn’t do our jobs
without the boats and services of dive
professionals, and we hope the articles
we write and the photos we publish
will inspire others to enjoy the locales
the operators service. Despite this interdependence,
however, it’s uncommon for an individual to have
made an impact as both a dive professional and an
underwater photographer. Such is the unlikely path
forged by Tanya Burnett.
Burnett was born in Wisconsin, but soon afterward
her father moved the family to the U.S. Virgin Islands,
where he managed a distribution center for Hobart, a
provider of equipment and services to the food retail
industry. This provided Burnett with an early childhood
of playing in the crystalline waters of St. Thomas.
St. Thomas is where she first saw the world beneath
the surface through a face mask, but she began diving and
snorkeling in earnest when the family relocated to Miami,
Fla. There she explored the waters of Biscayne Bay
from her 13-foot Boston Whaler. A graduate of North
Miami High, Burnett matriculated to Barry University
in Miami Shores and entered its Sport Management–
Diving Industry program, an innovative, accredited
curriculum developed by dive industry icon Tom Ingram
(now president and CEO of the Diving Equipment and
Marketing Association [DEMA]). Only the third woman
to graduate from this program, Burnett not only became
a scuba instructor but also left school determined to seek
a suitable business opportunity. With her education,
a $100,000 loan from her dad and a U.S. Coast Guard
captain’s license, the 21-year-old Burnett was on the hunt
for the right dive business to acquire.
After exhausting the area’s supply of dark and dingy
dive shops that might be for sale, in 1991 she created
the shop of her dreams — bright, airy and primed for
underwater adventure: H2O Scuba in North Miami.
Located on the water and with an early technicaldiving
bias (hers was the first shop to pump what was
then known as “voodoo gas” — nitrox), Burnett’s shop
began working with Tom Mount and Bret Gilliam,
respected pioneers in technical-diving education.
That collaboration led to Burnett’s involvement in
Technical Diving International (TDI) as a principal
and a contributor to the texts for the Nitrox, Advanced
Nitrox, and Trimix curricula.
The shop grew very quickly in the early 1990s, but
Burnett was keenly aware that brick-and-mortar scuba
shops were under competitive pressure from online
vendors. In a prescient and fortuitous moment she
found a buyer for her shop, paid back her dad and
established a version 2.0 career as a sales representative
for TDI instructional programs, UWATEC computers
and Dräger semiclosed-circuit rebreathers. Her territory
included South Florida and the Florida Keys, and her
dive and photo opportunities continued to expand.
Around this time she also began leading expeditions
to places such as Cocos Island, which commonly
involved such logistical undertakings as shepherding 30
rebreathers through customs and onto liveaboards.
Underwater cameras were an important part of
her world then, useful for illustrating textbooks and
as a creative outlet during her time in the water.
But Burnett’s career as a photojournalist likely had
its genesis in a 1995 assignment from Fred Garth of
Scuba Times: traveling to Borneo and Sipadan with
the Borneo tourism authority as the client — a very
nice first gig. This led her down a path familiar to
many underwater journalists: illustrating travel articles,
writing for dive magazines and selling stock photos
through the agencies of the day. By 2002 she was
leading dive trips around the world and finding success
in selling fine-art photography to collectors. In 2006
she married her underwater photo colleague, Kevin
Palmer, and the couple founded Island Exposure Inc.
Despite Burnett’s professional success as both an
artist and entrepreneur, she has dealt with her share
of unpleasantness as a woman in a male-dominated
industry. Photographer Allison Vitsky Sallmon once
asked Burnett in an interview, “Has anyone ever said
or done anything blatantly sexist or offensive to you as
a diver?” Burnett replied:
94 | FALL 2017