BIO

Anne Owen

This site is the personal photo gallery of Anne Owen, who until recently earned her living as an engineer, but managed to get away a few weeks each year to go diving and take pictures in wonderful and often remote locations. Now retired, I hope to continue to dive for many years to come. I am also increasingly interested in land-based travel and photography, so my website now includes both topside and underwater images.

I have been diving since 1970, when I made my first open-water scuba dive in a quarry, covered in ice. I have dived every year since then, visiting many of the diving world’s ‘go-to’ locations. I am often asked where my favorite dive spot is and I always answer that everywhere has something special to offer. Sometimes it will be a critter I’ve never seen before, or perhaps a familiar critter doing something I’ve not previously observed, but one way or another every dive is an adventure.

I first tried taking pictures underwater with an early Nikonos in a swimming pool sometime around 1971, but for me, it all stayed too difficult until the advent of TTL exposure control and my acquisition of a Nikonos V in 1990/. That came with a free 5 day tuition course which got me hooked. Since then, I have had the privilege to meet many great underwater photographers and to learn a little from each of them. I only wish that I could be more consistent in ‘putting it all together’.

Fortunately, the most prolific reef life is generally in the relatively shallow water, where sunlight can penetrate to drive the food chain. I rarely dive to much more than 70 feet and the majority of my images have been taken in depths of 50 feet or less. Shallower dives permit longer times underwater, but even so, I use Nitrox whenever possible to reduce the risks of diving 4 or even 5 times each day during a trip.

Nearly all my camera equipment is Nikon. Underwater, I use a D2XS in a SeaCam housing, with two strobes for balanced lighting. A 12-24mm works well for wide-angle, with 50mm and 105mm macros for the small stuff. On land, I use a D3XS. Most of my processing is done in Lightroom, with Photomechanic as a great tool for preliminary editing to eliminate the duff shots, of which there are always many.