AD 2016 Q3

This was very good equipment, designed in the USA by
Bob Hollis. When the Nikon F3 came out I went to Sea
and Sea for the housing and strobes and then went back
to Hugyfot when the F4 came out. I worked with them on
the design of that housing, and it turned out beautifully.
When the Nikon F5 came out there was a reason
to think differently about the housing design, because
now there was autofocus. The idea of two hands
always on the grips so one could continuously tweak
focus was now obsolete. I wanted to free my left hand
to hold the strobe as necessary, and Subal was more
accommodating of my design ideas for that housing.
With my migration to digital in 2002, I made the
transition to Seacam. They had a very nice housing for
the Nikon D1X, and I knew I was never going back to
shooting film. I wasn’t one of those guys who’d shoot
half a job on film and half on digital, deciding later
which I liked better. I waited to make the transition until
the technology was already better than film, and I’ve
never looked back. I’ve gone through many iterations of
Nikon digital cameras, always with the corresponding
Seacam housings, ports and strobes. At the moment
I shoot the Nikon D3 and the D800. Right now we’re
talking about manufacturing a Seacam housing for the
new Leica cameras. If that happens, I will have come full
circle, back to the brand of camera I shot for the first
time in Lake Zurich so many years ago.
SF: You have always been a very active and fit
person. Do you find it necessary for your job as an
underwater photographer?
KA: Maybe it’s not necessary, but it’s certainly helpful —
several times in my career I was awarded jobs over other
shooters because they were 65 pounds overweight. How
can you swim with whales if you can’t keep up, at least for
a while? My dad was a very skilled athlete; in fact, he won
the silver medal in gymnastics at the 1936 Olympics in
Berlin. He was very good at the rings and parallel bars and
remained active in mountaineering photography in his
career. I was a black belt in judo, I’ve freedived to 115 feet,
and for six years I was on the Swiss national windsurfing
team. I still mountain bike, but my nondiving passion
these days is solo-sailing my 28-foot boat.
At age 74 my father climbed the Matterhorn (one of the
highest peaks in the Swiss Alps at 14,692 feet), and as I near
my 70 th birthday there is no question I’d like to be like my
father. For him it was sport, sport, sport all the time, and he
told me if your body is OK, your mind is OK, too.
Many of the things that have happened in my life have
been significant events that shaped my future direction. I
see turning 70 as one of those. I have taught underwater
photography for 30 years (in fact, I have operated a
school for underwater photography near my home on the
French Riviera since 1995). But now I’m retiring from that
part of my life. I still have my Seacam online academy
(seacam-store.com/en/academy/the-equipment), but I’m
moving on from hosting students. That particular chapter
is done, but I look forward to the next ones.
•••
While Amsler has enjoyed many triumphs in life, he
experienced what he considers to be the apex of his
career in 1984, when he served as cameraman and actor
for a film called The Maldives: Paradise Transformed.
His co-star was none other than Hans Hass, the man
who first inspired him to peer beneath the sea to find his
way in life. AD
From left: Spinner dolphins at
Fernando de Noronha, Brazil,
in 2007 (Nikon D2X, Seacam
housing); wreck of a German
Messerschmitt fighter plane
from World War II in Marseille,
France, in 1978 (Hasselblad,
40mm lens, black-and-white
film, no strobe)
Above: Film production with
Hans Hass for The Maldives:
Paradise Transformed in 1984
ALERTDIVER.COM | 99