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pay attention to what I was saying. By then I had been
diving long enough to see changes in the ocean, and I
wanted to make people aware of the need for marine
conservation. I’ve always believed one-third of my time
and one-third of my money should be spent giving back
to the sea. My biggest campaign over the years has been
to protect sea turtles, and now for 30 years we have
been combating the harvesting of turtles for food and
souvenirs. I was involved in closing dolphinariums and
protecting sharks. More and more I have been fighting
for animals on land as well. Recently I have become an
ambassador for Sea Shepherd Global. They have power,
and with power comes awareness. Together we can do
great things to protect marine life.
SF: You have been active in commercial and
advertising photography in the dive industry.
I remember your early product ads for dive
computers, which combined studio photo
techniques in the underwater environment for
product illustration.
KA: I met Dick Bonin, the founder of Scubapro, while
at UNEXSO, and I used to shoot some of the very
early lifestyle photos for their catalogs. I also enjoyed
sponsorship from Nikon and Rolex. The composite
images you now see coming out of computers, I used
to do in real life, in the water. Many of these were big
campaigns, paying $2,000 a day, and the shoots could
go on for two or three weeks. That was really big money
then, and not so bad even now!
You and I, we had the good times. We got to be
underwater photographers when the scuba equipment
became good enough to trust, the cameras and housings
were good enough to capture quality photos, the
dive infrastructure was maturing, and the reefs were
unimaginably beautiful. Ours was the sweet spot in time.
When I was talking to topside commercial and
editorial photographers at agencies such as Black Star,
they always told me it was important to become a
photojournalist. I had to be as good at writing as I was
at photography, maybe better. This helped me when
it came to doing books. I’ve published 14 books —
five coffee-table books, five dive guides and assorted
underwater photo guides and such.
SF: I know you as a photo equipment innovator,
and you have a close and visible relationship with
Seacam these days. How did you evolve from your
Rolleimarin to the digital cameras you use today?
KA: When I think back to the various cameras I used
over the decades, I note the good reasons I had to move
from one to the next. Actually, I am very loyal to my
Amsler was the overall winner of the 2nd CMAS World
Championship of Underwater Photography, held in Cadaqués,
Spain, in 1987.
Opposite: School of bannerfish in Rangiroa, French Polynesia,
in 1994 (Nikonos RS, 13mm fisheye lens)
gear. I have dived with Scubapro equipment for 45 years,
and I’ve used only Nikon cameras since 1975.
My first self-made housing was pretty easy to
move up from. I know what I like in an underwater
housing, but I am not a brilliant machinist or housing
manufacturer. Even the Calypso PHOT was a huge
improvement over the crude housing I began with. But
I knew to get the fish portraits I wanted that I needed
greater compositional accuracy than cameras of the
Nikonos design could provide. I needed the precision
of reflex viewing. I will say that throughout my career,
however, as long as I was shooting film, the Nikonos
and 15mm lens would be with me on most every dive
for wide-angle shots. Some of my favorite underwater
photos were taken with that unique and venerable optic.
As a student I’d play drums in jazz bands to earn
enough to satisfy my lust for camera gear. This took
me (chronologically) from the Calypso PHOT to the
Rollei twin-lens reflex camera in the Rolleimarin housing
(coincidentally a Hans Hass design) to a Hasselblad in
a Hugyfot housing and then a Bronica 2 ¼ square (also
in a Hugyfot) during my medium-format era. In 1975 I
headed in a different, more modern direction with 35mm
film and a housed Nikon F2 with an action finder. I had
the Oceanic Hydro 35 housing and Oceanic 2001 strobes.
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