When I was a little girl all I wanted to be was a diver—just like my parents. And also an astronaut thanks to my obsession with Apollo 13 and basically anything to do with the space program.
But I also had the gift of art and words. I excelled in art classes in high school, but then decided to it away for a long time, toughing it out in math and physics courses, even earning an BS in Economics. But I ultimately spent most of my time in the Fun Physics of the SCUBA world. Then I found photography.
It was my dad, the engineer, who insisted I take his underwater camera and strobe for a trip. Dad was also an artist, a photographer, who had spent years shooting underwater before I came along.
I was born and brought home to house with a darkroom and walls full of fish portraits. This was my destiny. My legacy. It never occurred to me to pursue until I was packing for the Bahamas and he said, “Here, take this. Let me give you the quick rundown: a physics lesson.”
Because photography is physics—art physics.
And put a camera into a little box full of o-rings and take it to a place where the light disappears and you’re weightless… well, that was as close to astronaut as I was going to get at 22.
It took one dive with that little camera and a big ol’ strobe to get me hooked. All of my worlds—science, diving, art—collided in those 40 minutes I was underwater in Nassau, and I haven’t looked back.
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