Are you fascinated by the intricacies of underwater photography? Join me in welcoming Nicolas Remy, a renowned underwater photographer and the brains behind The Underwater Club, as we delve into this captivating art form.
Nicolas, along with his wife Lena, initially captivated my attention with their breathtaking photos and their use of rebreathers during dives. Rebreather diving for marine photography seems like a natural fit, offering extended dive times, serene silence, and the ability to approach subjects closely without disruption. In this episode, Nicolas shares insights into their preferred rebreathers, the Revo and Horizon, and highlights the benefits they provide.
Beyond capturing stunning shots, Nicolas is passionate about teaching and simplifying complex topics for others. Having left the corporate world behind, he has dedicated the past 18 months to refining The Underwater Club and its offerings. This platform fosters two-way communication and is brimming with Nicolas' expertise, accessible to all club members through various channels, including personalized coaching.
An accomplished writer, Nicolas has contributed content to esteemed publications such as Scuba Diver magazine, Narked at 90, WETPIXEL, and OZ Diver.
Stay tuned for the upcoming launch of The Underwater Club's website, where you can sign up for the newsletter and stand a chance to win exciting prizes. Join us in the studio as Nicolas shares his journey from his first discover scuba dive on Kangaroo Island to achieving global recognition for his underwater photography and establishing The Underwater Club.
DON'T FORGET TO SIGN UP FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN A PRIZE! DO THAT HERE
Nicholas' Links
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicolaslenaremy
Nicolas & Lena on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolaslenaremy/
Photography website:https://www.nicolaslenaremy.com/
The Underwater Club links
website: https://theunderwaterclub.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theuwclub/
The Underwater Club with Nicolas Remy
10% discount on the annual subscription to The Underwater Club with promo code SCUBAGOAT
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Thanks for listening legends!
Want to be a guest on the show?
GREAT! - use this link, drop your details & let's get chatting.
Dive Travel with Nomadic Scuba
Everyone needs a solid travel buddy… Founded by Matt, Nomadic Scuba is an online booking agency for scuba divers. Chances are, Matt himself will sort out your trip - he’s a bit of a planning geek (and loves it!). Check out Nomadic Scuba today and Breathe life into your adventure!
Shopping
Scuba GOAT Amazon Shop - Click here to view
Advertising
Interested in advertising on the show? Sponsoring an episode or partnering with us? Get in touch today for more details on how we can work together.
🎵 Music: Forever Young by the legend - AudioCoffee | AudioCoffee.net
If you can spare 5 minutes and would like to support the show we would highly appreciate a 5-star review. Please use this link:
00:00:07
Matt Waters: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Scuba
00:00:08
go Podcast where we explore the fascinating world of Scuba
00:00:11
diving and ocean exploration. This week we are talking
00:00:15
photography and rebreathers with multi award winning
00:00:17
photographer, Nicholas roaming. With a passion for the ocean and
00:00:21
its inhabitants. Nicholas captures the beauty of the
00:00:24
underwater world through his lens and is eager to share his
00:00:27
art with fellow enthusiasts. However, Nicholas is not just a
00:00:32
photographer, but a bit of a super geek. He analyses
00:00:35
situations, technical products, heck, anything that needs
00:00:38
analysing gets analysed. He also loves to help aspiring
00:00:43
photographers capture that perfect underwater image. And so
00:00:46
with his expertise in underwater photography, love for the ocean,
00:00:50
and abilities to formulate plans and procedures, he has created
00:00:53
the underwater club. Now, the underwater club is an online
00:00:57
community that anyone can subscribe to, regardless of your
00:01:00
level of experience. Over the last couple of years, he has
00:01:03
tirelessly devoted himself to producing detailed bite size
00:01:07
videos and a multitude of classes to share his expertise
00:01:10
with all club members. Welcome to the show, buddy.
00:01:13
Nicholas Remy: Thank you, Matt. Nice to meet you in person.
00:01:15
Matt Waters: It's been a while I think I've been I've been
00:01:18
watching what you and Lena have been doing since I got to
00:01:21
Sydney, which is what almost five years now. I think
00:01:23
Nicholas Remy: you're right. I think we've been I think we've
00:01:25
got to Sydney sort of a decent time though. Yeah, yeah. Five
00:01:28
years ago, something like that. Yeah.
00:01:30
Matt Waters: Yeah. Well, I only came for a visit initially. And
00:01:33
then hey, presto, here we are. Yeah, right. Why don't you start
00:01:39
off the show. Let's have a little bit about you. Why are we
00:01:42
sat here and gonna talk about stuff?
00:01:45
Nicholas Remy: Okay. Well, my name is Nikolas Remy. A French
00:01:52
born gay. I'm 39 years old now. What can I say? I've got a
00:01:58
lovely two Cheeky monkeys at home, keeping me busy and
00:02:01
entertained.
00:02:03
Matt Waters: By Cheeky monkeys, you mean kids? Right?
00:02:07
Nicholas Remy: wasn't clear. And I've got a wife as well, who
00:02:12
happens to be a diver, underwater photographer and
00:02:16
entered river diver as well. Yeah. So I have lots of things
00:02:19
in common. And yeah, the main reason I came the same time as
00:02:23
you to Sydney was essentially my passion for diving. And yeah,
00:02:27
look, a few years later, I decided to make underwater
00:02:33
photography a full time thing for myself. And I guess that has
00:02:36
to do with the fact the fact that we're talking now. Yeah,
00:02:38
but Yeah, happy days. Yeah,
00:02:41
Matt Waters: yeah. The thing that caught my attention when
00:02:43
you were doing all the socials, because obviously, when you get
00:02:46
bored in an evening, we all do it. We just got to scroll
00:02:47
through socials, your photos pop up, and you delve a little bit
00:02:52
deeper. And the first thing I remember seeing of you guys, and
00:02:55
I mean, yourself, and Lena was going dive in getting these
00:02:59
amazing, amazing shots. But you were doing it on rebreathers. So
00:03:05
that was the different thing that caught my attention. Right?
00:03:08
Initially, it wasn't the shots initially, it was the fact you
00:03:10
were doing it on rebury. That's because obviously, I've been
00:03:12
told by many people, if you're on a rebreather, there's no
00:03:14
bubble as you get closer to the critters, blah, blah, blah,
00:03:16
blah, blah. It's exactly what you've been doing. Right?
00:03:18
Nicholas Remy: That's right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we reverse,
00:03:21
really, that the the photographer's best friends, as
00:03:24
long as I guess you can, you know, sort of keep your
00:03:27
attention, giving them a little bit of attention that they need
00:03:30
to sort of keep diving safe. They're just fantastic for for
00:03:34
for underwater photography. I mean, you get closer to
00:03:37
wildlife, you spend much more time in the water, you don't
00:03:41
have to worry too much about, you know, you don't have to
00:03:44
worry so much about things like caravans. The opportunities are
00:03:48
very different. And that's, yeah, that's why we both we will
00:03:51
reproduce on a regular basis. Every every time we dive
00:03:54
basically.
00:03:55
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah. And you gotta get a couple of hours on
00:03:57
the water as well. Yeah,
00:03:59
Nicholas Remy: I mean, it's, it has to do a little bit with the
00:04:02
Cheeky monkeys I talked about at the beginning. We we've been
00:04:07
together and I much before we had, you know, projects of
00:04:11
starting a family diving has been our thing since nearly the
00:04:15
beginning. And at some point, we're like, okay, we would like
00:04:18
to have kids together. And then, you know, we looked around what
00:04:21
others were doing, and usually they were giving up on diving or
00:04:24
sort of, you know, full on passion, right? And then
00:04:28
without, okay, there's lots of, I guess, life adjustments we're
00:04:33
very much willing to do, but stopping diving is not an option
00:04:36
at all. So we're thinking, okay, and the thing is, I guess if
00:04:40
there's one person in the relationship diving, not the
00:04:42
other, you can always, you know, lock some time for you and have
00:04:45
a bit of me time, but we wanted to keep diving together. And we
00:04:50
thought, okay, what's our young parent life going to be like in
00:04:54
terms of diving? And we thought, we need to just look at time for
00:04:59
diving Every weekend, we were both working full time. So every
00:05:02
weekend, there will be a time for that where we won't be
00:05:05
parents will be diverse. And we said, well, let's say Saturday
00:05:09
morning, we have to look to some time, Saturday morning, we'll
00:05:12
find a babysitter, and maybe we'll trust them with the kids
00:05:15
for Health Day, how they seemed like, what we were comfortable
00:05:19
to do. Not not a full day, but have they seemed reasonable. And
00:05:23
then we said, okay, so if we leave the kids to the
00:05:27
babysitter, we drive to wherever is the shortest dive site, we go
00:05:32
in the water, we dive, well, one hour on the boat, maybe, then we
00:05:36
want to have another dive, we all do service interval, we
00:05:38
actually don't have time. And we don't want our dive routine to
00:05:42
be one hour per week. So we're like, Okay, what else could we
00:05:45
do? Well, to save time, you save time by not exiting the water,
00:05:49
not preparing your gear, not changing things and all that.
00:05:53
And long story short, you know, time after time, we said, Okay,
00:05:56
well, why don't we just spend a good three hours in the water.
00:05:59
And this way we make 100%, the most of the time that we're
00:06:03
giving ourselves to keep on enjoying diving. And that's what
00:06:07
took us the
00:06:08
Matt Waters: happy days. So the bank balances well, in the
00:06:11
negatives, having bought a couple of rebreathers.
00:06:16
Nicholas Remy: Yeah, and that's, that's probably a thing about,
00:06:19
about us as divers. When I chat with, you know, other divers
00:06:24
very quickly, you start talking about travel, where you've been
00:06:27
and all that. And I think I've been diving now since 16 years,
00:06:32
something like that. And I think people are always surprised to
00:06:34
see how little I have travelled, you know, compared to how long
00:06:37
I've been diving. And that's because, yeah, our live setup
00:06:41
has been around. How can we lock in as much diving hours as we
00:06:46
can per week. And that may imply, you know, not being able
00:06:50
to travel so easily outside? Yeah. And that's why Sydney so
00:06:53
so that's also why we came to Sydney. Because we realised that
00:06:56
well, if we only have going to dive three hours per week in one
00:07:00
shot, and we have to be in a city that's big enough for both
00:07:05
of us to find a job. Yeah. Where in the world could that be? And
00:07:08
Sydney ticks the box really well for those things.
00:07:11
Matt Waters: Nice one. Nice one. What does it was it Lena does
00:07:13
then what's the what's the job that she's doing?
00:07:15
Nicholas Remy: She's smoking in it. She's doing project
00:07:17
management. Nice.
00:07:19
Matt Waters: Okay, so does she get to choose like Project
00:07:24
lengths and then just have a little bit of time off and crack
00:07:26
on with it, load more dive in and then pick up the next job.
00:07:29
For
00:07:29
Nicholas Remy: now, I think that would be a good thing for her.
00:07:31
That would be a great setup for her. But for now what she's
00:07:33
doing is she's a full time employee. Okay, so it's more,
00:07:36
it's more a weekend thing for her plus the odd trip every year
00:07:40
or something like that. Yeah,
00:07:41
Matt Waters: yeah. And what were you doing before you went full
00:07:44
time on what we're going to talk about?
00:07:46
Nicholas Remy: Yeah, I was doing at CMOS Linna. Actually, we, we
00:07:49
started working in the same company. And we've been doing it
00:07:53
together, sort of together for a few years, until I finally
00:07:56
choose to switch back.
00:07:58
Matt Waters: Yeah, run away. So where did it all start? Then?
00:08:04
Because you mentioned you've been driving for 16 years? Yep.
00:08:07
What did you learn? Um,
00:08:09
Nicholas Remy: so funnily enough, not too far from here.
00:08:12
Okay. So, long time ago, we started dating back in the day
00:08:16
we were, we were studying in the same engineering school back in
00:08:20
France. And the school had an exchange programmes with a few
00:08:24
universities and one of them was Wollongong University. All
00:08:27
right, and we thought, wow, Australia, Hey, that sounds you
00:08:30
know, I had a family history of, you know, being an expat living
00:08:36
abroad. And after a few years in France, being a student doing
00:08:39
those things, I was like, yeah, it tickles me. I want to go
00:08:41
travel again. And, and some guy from the same engineering school
00:08:46
came back from Wollongong and you say, Wow, guys, you have you
00:08:48
can believe in the lifestyle there. It's so amazing. And all
00:08:51
that. And I spoke with him and I was like, you have to go and
00:08:54
that sounds fantastic. And lucky for me, Lena was didn't have
00:08:58
much, much experience travelling at the time, but she said, Oh,
00:09:01
you're going we'll go with you. Okay, you know, for for, you
00:09:05
know, we were just a young young couple with not so much history,
00:09:08
but then she said, I'll go as well. Alright. And then we
00:09:12
jumped on a plane to Australia. And a bit before we did that,
00:09:17
actually. She told me Hey, did you ever try Scuba diving? And
00:09:21
I'm like, No, but I've always meant to at some point, you
00:09:24
know, probably and she said, You know what, Australia apparently
00:09:26
is pretty good for that. Like, Ah, okay. And, yeah, long story
00:09:31
short, we ended up in Wollongong. And, I mean, before
00:09:34
that, we were travelling a little bit before settling down
00:09:37
here. And at some point on the trip, it was my birthday. And
00:09:42
such a lovely girlfriend. She had planned to try die for me
00:09:45
when she didn't know. And then we were in Kangaroo Island and
00:09:48
she said, hey, you know what? Tomorrow we're going to Dave,
00:09:51
we're going to be this guy here. He's going to teach us and we're
00:09:53
going to dive brilliant. No, I was terrified. You know, I was
00:10:00
like decompression sickness, how am I going to cope with the
00:10:03
safety stubs and all those things? I was very stressed
00:10:06
actually. And then he took us to a dazzling two metres depth, you
00:10:10
know, and I managed to survive and a lot of these
00:10:13
Matt Waters: brilliant and never looked back,
00:10:15
Nicholas Remy: never looked back. I mean, then we went to
00:10:18
settle down in Wollongong we learnt diving investment not too
00:10:22
far from here. Yeah. Loved it. Lots of diving during the year.
00:10:26
And then we went back to France because family reasons,
00:10:29
essentially. And then we dove essentially in the Mediterranean
00:10:32
Sea for about 10 years until we came back here.
00:10:36
Matt Waters: Okay. Okay. What do you see in the med?
00:10:39
Nicholas Remy: Ye that much?
00:10:43
Matt Waters: Plenty of RX. Yeah.
00:10:44
Nicholas Remy: Some RX? Yeah, definitely good RX. Yeah, the
00:10:48
thing is, I'm sure the med has potential to be sensational. But
00:10:54
it's a sea that has been surrounded by so many people.
00:10:58
For a long time over history. There's been lots of
00:11:02
overfishing, pollution at times where we didn't know better, we
00:11:05
didn't know what we were doing. And you can see the results. So
00:11:09
back in Hong Kong, we were diving invest points. You know,
00:11:13
we jump in the gutter, one of the popular spots today. And
00:11:17
often enough, you will see a sea dragon, you would see a big blue
00:11:20
grouper coming right at your face. A big blue ray at a time
00:11:24
when I was very short. sighted. Yeah, yep. short sighted. But
00:11:29
you didn't need a prescription mess because the things were so
00:11:31
massive that you will see anyways, right? Yeah. And then
00:11:35
we go to France will end next to Cannes, we find the dive shop
00:11:39
they take as diving. And for young divers, we're just open
00:11:45
water certified. You know, we're not used to going deep and doing
00:11:48
those things. The guy pulls us down from zero to 14 metres very
00:11:52
fast. And we are like, you know, a bit stressed. But okay. And
00:11:56
we're thinking that we're going to 40 metres, we're going to
00:11:57
have to tell that out to all our dive buddies, and I'm sure we're
00:12:00
going to see some crazy things at 40 metres, where we saw one
00:12:04
lobster, and maybe two siblings, and that was it. They were like,
00:12:09
Oh, crap. And then we asked ourselves are we actually going
00:12:13
to keep diving or do we just keep on the regular basis? Or do
00:12:15
we keep that for you know, the trip to the Red Sea once a year
00:12:19
and that's it. But eventually we decided we really liked being in
00:12:24
the water and, you know, that's for we kept looking diving, but
00:12:29
for sure the the med as a few as a few things we really liked,
00:12:33
you know, big dramatic landscapes. Nice gorgonians but
00:12:39
from a wildlife perspective, get not not comparable to the
00:12:45
Matt Waters: or what's your what's your favourite so far?
00:12:49
Wildlife?
00:12:51
Nicholas Remy: Like animal? Ah, I think I there's a few but I
00:12:57
think I really liked the I was going to say with your leafy
00:13:01
lettuce, the leafy Seadragon
00:13:03
Matt Waters: PVC dragon.
00:13:03
Nicholas Remy: Yeah, so lovely.
00:13:05
Matt Waters: I've yet to take those off. We're gonna go we're
00:13:07
gonna go this year, but I've got Galapagos trips. So that's where
00:13:10
we go next year. Yeah, it's not. It's not a bad excuse not to go
00:13:15
to the South Australia. Yeah.
00:13:17
Nicholas Remy: And it's really easy to go. I mean, you as long
00:13:19
as you know where to go. We can talk about that. It's from the
00:13:23
shore shadow, easy and beautiful creatures.
00:13:28
Matt Waters: I think that's the beauty here as well. You've just
00:13:31
mentioned depth. But along the coastlines here in Australia,
00:13:35
you don't need a lot of depth to say such a vast array of
00:13:40
critters and creatures. Biodiversity is insane. And
00:13:44
Nicholas Remy: we were really fortunate. I've read somewhere
00:13:47
that in Sydney Harbour Sydney's natural harbour there's more
00:13:51
fish species than in the world Mediterranean.
00:13:54
Matt Waters: That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, there
00:13:56
probably is more fish in my bath that I don't own than what's in
00:13:59
the Mediterranean.
00:14:04
Nicholas Remy: Yeah, possibly. Now we've very gifted on this. I
00:14:09
have landed in Sydney, like I said, more than five years ago,
00:14:13
a bit more than five years ago now. And I thought, okay,
00:14:15
there's like, what 30 shore dive sites, that will certainly be a
00:14:19
good, good basis to keep us entertained. And then a bunch of
00:14:24
other boat dives. And we're thinking okay, and there's some
00:14:27
wreck dives as well. And in those five years, I think I've
00:14:32
done one, maybe two bad days and that's it, because they're not
00:14:36
good but because the show diving is so good, so spectacular, that
00:14:39
you know for what I do, which is photography. I enjoy so much
00:14:43
going there spending three hours or even even more and you know,
00:14:46
having those amazing, amazing things to further if
00:14:50
Matt Waters: I'm making the most of this week because my other
00:14:51
half jazz, she's away in New Zealand for the week with work,
00:14:55
right? So I'm gonna go and hit Clifton gardens a few times and
00:14:58
just spend all the time I'm in the world on my camera and
00:15:02
macro. Because she's not a massive macro fan. So she gets
00:15:05
bored if I'm taking a shot so
00:15:07
Nicholas Remy: much time. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, especially that
00:15:10
time of the year the water is very warm. Seven,
00:15:13
Matt Waters: while speaking to Ken, Ken Tang pillar. Oh, this
00:15:17
one. I think they did a night dive on Saturday, it was like
00:15:20
2021 degrees. Nice. I'm not even gonna bother with a wetsuit.
00:15:25
I'll just pull the shark skin on.
00:15:26
Nicholas Remy: Yeah, that is. But I've been there yesterday
00:15:29
evening, actually. Oh, yeah. So by the way, if, if I'm asking
00:15:32
you to repeat something, I may still have water in between the
00:15:34
ears. So don't don't take offence.
00:15:36
Matt Waters: That's all right. Like mine on age.
00:15:40
Nicholas Remy: But um, yeah, there was fantastic bit a bit
00:15:44
murky, but there's always so much to see.
00:15:46
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah, to get all the usual critters. Yeah.
00:15:50
Nicholas Remy: And that's a good time in the year for angler fish
00:15:53
for fish. And that's a time where this is you can see them
00:15:59
meeting or you know, having a bit of an interesting behaviour.
00:16:03
And yesterday evening, Linda showed me one push me to
00:16:05
actually just next to each other. And it was like, Gee,
00:16:08
that might be the moment that might be the time a year or one
00:16:12
very lovely yellow with, like stripes on his hands. And
00:16:16
another one, which was more pale pink with dark brown stripes
00:16:22
next to each other. So I started taking photos and waiting but
00:16:25
nothing happened. Well, that's what they did. So if you go in
00:16:29
the main domain GT dementia dissection, where most of the
00:16:32
fishermans are, if you look towards the inside of the Hubble
00:16:36
that would be on the pillars on the right. If they don't move
00:16:40
there will be there.
00:16:40
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'll have a look. We went out
00:16:43
there last week. And there was there were two side by side down
00:16:47
towards the end of the jetty a yellow one and a black one, much
00:16:49
smaller black one. If they weren't getting jiggy, jiggy,
00:16:53
migraine, no official like bliss, anything.
00:16:56
Nicholas Remy: But the thing is that it's when they finish the
00:16:58
it's it's dinnertime. Yeah.
00:17:00
Matt Waters: Ciao. Literally. Yeah. Okay, cool. Okay, so the
00:17:09
underwater club? Yes. What's this all about?
00:17:12
Nicholas Remy: So, the underwater club is, is is a big
00:17:17
term in my relationship with diving and underwater
00:17:20
photography. Many years, it's all been about just enjoying
00:17:24
myself taking photos. And you know, the best way I could spend
00:17:28
my time was being in the wearer taking photos. And the next best
00:17:32
way was possibly being next to Linda while she was taking
00:17:35
photos, and perhaps I was looking for, you know, stuff for
00:17:38
her to photograph watching over her, helping her with lighting
00:17:41
and doing those things together. Yeah, but that was really that
00:17:43
was that was really neat. And then COVID came, and like
00:17:50
everyone had a bit more, a bit less work, actually, yeah, but a
00:17:53
bit of more free time on my on my hands, a good time to a good
00:17:59
time to reflect. And I had, I guess I had grown a little bit
00:18:07
frustrated that myself on the way I had, I was managing my
00:18:11
time. So I came to Australia to enjoy diving in Sydney,
00:18:15
essentially, because I knew it was so good, plus the odd dive
00:18:18
trip once a year maybe. And then I realised that guess what
00:18:22
diving is really so good. And we know about it because we
00:18:25
experience it. And we have a lovely community of people with
00:18:27
the visibility group in Facebook, where you can exchange
00:18:30
tips share what you've seen in a dive. So you know what's
00:18:33
happening there in the community, in the dive sites.
00:18:37
And because of the routines that we had managed to set up, you
00:18:40
know, around our kids, our dive was going to be Saturday
00:18:44
morning, and that's it. So if for whatever reason, Saturday
00:18:47
was a crappy time to dive, you know, tire change, big rain,
00:18:51
whatever the case might be your big swell in the wrong
00:18:53
direction. That's where we're going to dive if there was some
00:18:57
crazy good conditions or some interesting wildlife spotty, the
00:19:00
middle of the week, or on Sunday evening. Too bad too sad. I
00:19:04
couldn't go diving. And I was working a lot. my corporate job
00:19:08
was very, very demanding. And very interesting at the same
00:19:12
time, but busy days with customers during during the
00:19:16
normal nine to five and busy evenings because it's a I used
00:19:20
to work for a European company. So in the evenings, I was
00:19:22
catching up with colleagues with Europe. So very, very packed
00:19:25
lifestyle. And I realised at some point that, you know, in a
00:19:29
regular week, there was very few time for me to say hey, I really
00:19:35
want to do what I want to do, which is more diving. And it was
00:19:38
thinking again, I chose to become the father. I love my
00:19:42
Cheeky monkeys. And it just to have this IT job. Well, it's a
00:19:46
great job, but I love my kids even more. So if there's one
00:19:48
thing I'm going to change, it's the job and the public key. How
00:19:53
can I you know, make a living around underwater photography
00:19:59
and And nowadays, as you as you know, you can't, you can't
00:20:06
really pay all your bills by just setting photos. That is
00:20:10
something that was possible maybe 20 years ago. But
00:20:13
nowadays, you have to do a few different things to, to make up
00:20:17
your new lifestyle, basically. So I started to think, what are
00:20:21
some of the things that I'm good at, and that I would enjoy doing
00:20:26
for the time that I'm not taking photos in my new life. And it
00:20:30
struck me that in all, all the all the jobs I've had, during my
00:20:35
corporate career, there was one thing in common, very, very
00:20:40
different jobs. But one thing is common, is that I was on a
00:20:44
regular basis having to explain complex topics, in a simple way.
00:20:50
Because the person I was going to explain it to was less
00:20:53
technical or less expert me on the topic. And, and I guess that
00:20:57
was my talent, there was something I was good at doing.
00:21:00
And I realised as well, that was something I really liked to
00:21:02
doing. I really enjoyed that process to, you know, be with
00:21:07
the person, hear their questions, put myself in their
00:21:11
shoes, and see, okay, how can I take that person with me to
00:21:15
understanding this new thing that they need to understand? I
00:21:18
really enjoyed that process. So then I told myself, well, I'm
00:21:21
going to teach underwater photography, that's, that's
00:21:24
something I would enjoy doing a lot. And then came the question.
00:21:29
And this took this process took quite a few months to get the
00:21:33
final ID, but dedicated came the question of, how am I going to
00:21:37
teach. So typical example. There's a few underwater
00:21:42
photographers teaching this way you organise a trip, you take,
00:21:46
you take, you know, a number of students on a trip with you.
00:21:49
When you're on the trip, you have workshops, you have
00:21:52
classes, you show them techniques, and you explain a
00:21:54
few things. And that is something I'm going to do on a
00:21:57
case by case basis. For example, in next January, I'm going to do
00:22:02
that with Linda resort during 10 days. But that's going to be
00:22:07
another thing, because I've realised that there is another
00:22:10
way to learn underwater photography, which is
00:22:13
essentially how I've learned but upgraded in a way. So
00:22:18
essentially, the, the observation I came to was that
00:22:24
all the moments where I learned, I learned a lot with reading
00:22:28
books, I'm very analytical person. So I guess that that's
00:22:32
how I'm comfortable learning. And I realised that all the aha
00:22:37
moments where I realised that I've been improved, I've been
00:22:42
able to master a new technique to take better photos of the
00:22:45
subject or the situations, the aha moments was not underwater,
00:22:50
the aha moment attends at home, talking with someone in the bar,
00:22:55
in between dives. In the water was the time where I would test
00:22:59
the idea that I had before, hey, if I would put my stroke this
00:23:02
way, I'm going to project the animal's shadows here, then
00:23:06
doing that I'm going to help the silhouette of the animal pop out
00:23:10
from the background will be less distracting. So I had all these
00:23:14
ideas in between dives. And then it will just be a case of
00:23:16
practising in the world to just test the ideas that test my
00:23:20
understanding was okay. And then that's how I came down to the
00:23:24
idea of founding, creating the underwater club. So the
00:23:28
underwater club is in simple terms. It's an online underwater
00:23:33
photography school, where I've created I've put basically
00:23:38
everything I know in terms of underwater photography, in the
00:23:42
format of essentially video lessons. And, and it's about to
00:23:47
go live in a few weeks time now.
00:23:49
Matt Waters: Yeah, congratulations, a lot of hard
00:23:52
work on it.
00:23:53
Nicholas Remy: Yeah. When we started, I had to, you know, of
00:23:58
course, asking his opinion a few times, because there will be a
00:24:02
bit of time during which he would have, you know, to cope
00:24:05
with me not having an income and investing my time on something
00:24:09
else. Yeah. Which he really liked the ID. The only thing is
00:24:12
at the beginning, I told her, Okay, I'm going to do a bit of
00:24:16
concept and design on the website, you know, make sure I
00:24:18
have the right components. I know how to build it. And then
00:24:21
there will be a time where I'm going to put together these,
00:24:24
these online courses. I'm going to script them. I'm going to
00:24:28
film the videos, I'm going to edit them and all that. And then
00:24:32
you know, just package it on the website launch and that's it.
00:24:34
The gender workload is life. And I told her, yeah, the course is
00:24:39
production. It's going to take about five to six weeks. She
00:24:45
said okay, yep, that's fine. We can we can deal with that. Okay.
00:24:48
It took a year and a half.
00:24:53
Matt Waters: Hey, she's not divorced, so you must be doing
00:24:55
something right.
00:24:56
Nicholas Remy: It's something. Yeah, I was very nervous to tell
00:24:59
him where or hadn't let's say I had registered the first
00:25:03
recorded the first course. And I realised that we need much more
00:25:07
time to do the whole thing again to her. I said, Look, this is
00:25:10
what I've been doing. This is the time I've taken to record
00:25:16
these first few lessons. For example, at the beginning, when
00:25:19
we, when we drafted the, the plan of the courses and the
00:25:23
lessons, we would say, okay, there will be a lesson on, let's
00:25:29
say, portrait photography, how do you turn? You know, how do
00:25:33
you move away from just an ID shot of a fish into a report
00:25:36
went with character. And I said, well, the video is probably
00:25:40
going to be three minutes long, you know, a script detail, speak
00:25:44
quickly, and three minutes that that's it. And then 40 minutes
00:25:47
of video, you need selections too much time to film, but
00:25:49
that's going to be quick enough. The video is about 15 minutes,
00:25:53
because there's actually so much to say on the topic, especially
00:25:56
if you want the person listening to be able to, you know, not be
00:26:00
lost in translation or not lose track of what's being being
00:26:03
said. So, I asked her, I said, Do you still want to move
00:26:07
forward? Are you still happy for me to spend well, much more time
00:26:10
in building this? And she looked at all the plan I put together?
00:26:14
And she said, Well, we've everything you've scripted here,
00:26:18
there's enough to fill two or maybe three underwater
00:26:20
photography books. So you don't write two or three books in one
00:26:24
month. It does take time. So yeah, that no, that makes sense.
00:26:28
Keep going. And you know, thumbs up, then they went.
00:26:33
Matt Waters: As that saying goes behind every good man, there's
00:26:37
an even better woman. And I'm just sitting here listening to
00:26:41
you talk through this. And I have exactly the same at home.
00:26:45
With reconstructing my travel company and, and jazz, just keep
00:26:49
going, keep going, keep going. And those Fuckit moments where
00:26:53
you've had a shit day and walk away from the computer, there's
00:26:56
always she's always there to say, All right, I will come back
00:26:59
to it tomorrow. Keep going.
00:27:01
Nicholas Remy: We're lucky and we are very, very lucky. It's
00:27:04
that it's that emotional support, I mean, to start so
00:27:06
that that sounding board you have as well, not being just
00:27:09
with yourself testing the ideas. And I mean, I also have tested
00:27:14
quite a few ideas with with friends. But the thing is with
00:27:17
friends, people sometimes are just polite. Yes. So you know,
00:27:20
you don't you don't you're not always sure that exactly how
00:27:23
they how they feel. Although I did ask for you know, brutally
00:27:27
honest feedback and and I've got some of it. I have tested the
00:27:31
ideas and the format, interviewing a few people, quite
00:27:34
a few people actually a while ago, including yourself. Yep, I
00:27:37
remember. Yeah, but but definitely having a little
00:27:41
support for a number of a number of many ways actually has been
00:27:45
fantastic.
00:27:47
Matt Waters: I just want to say that person. So excuse me. So
00:27:56
with with regards to the dive in and the photography, did the
00:28:02
photography start online before or did the dive in introduce you
00:28:05
to photography,
00:28:07
Nicholas Remy: and the photography started just
00:28:09
essentially before, but just just a little bit before? I came
00:28:12
very late to photography are you doing? Yeah, you're right. But I
00:28:19
want to hear how you started as well. But um, I guess for me, I
00:28:24
used to play around with my mom's camera when it was a kid,
00:28:27
you know, old film camera, and they enjoyed it. But also
00:28:30
remember from from the time that the camera was only capable of
00:28:34
taking Okay, shots during the day. If it was, you know, dinner
00:28:39
time, it was a bit dark in the place. Unless you had the flush
00:28:43
going on. Everything didn't look good, basically. And you've had
00:28:46
the flush going on people had a funny face. It just didn't
00:28:49
affect Well, I don't really like the sort of I don't really like
00:28:55
the sort of results that the camera can take in many
00:28:58
situations. So I went a bit away from from a from photography at
00:29:02
the time. And then, I guess, one year before we moved to
00:29:07
Australia as the first time as students, I stumbled upon a
00:29:12
photography magazine, you know, in in the station about it out
00:29:18
of curiosity, because I was going to take the train with
00:29:20
Lynne at the time. And, you know, we didn't have
00:29:23
smartphones, iPhones, I was going to get bored with the
00:29:25
magazine to write something that made us so different. That's
00:29:30
good to get bored. Sometimes it is fantastic. But anyway, so I
00:29:36
pulled this magazine. I can't remember why. But it was in
00:29:39
France. It was the biggest pornographic magazine and the
00:29:42
most popular one. So the name The name meant something for me.
00:29:45
And then I read this article, and it was about some guy at the
00:29:48
time that he was what 2006 So it was, you know, digital seminars
00:29:55
were starting to become more popular and more affordable for
00:29:58
people. And someone was doing Something really interesting. He
00:30:01
had device here designed a device where he could what was
00:30:10
it, he was going to pop a champagne bottle. And there was
00:30:13
a device going to capture the sound of the popping and trigger
00:30:19
a very very fast flash that was going to freeze the motion of
00:30:24
that the champion of the cork article, yeah, the cork
00:30:28
instrumentation and you will be able to photograph it. And I saw
00:30:32
this crazy photo where you have the cork frozen with the
00:30:36
champion coming and the guy did something else he did like used
00:30:42
like, like, again, not not again, with big bullets, the
00:30:45
small one, you know what I mean? Or like a little pellet. Yeah,
00:30:47
pellet pellet gun to shoot on, dices on the few objects, and it
00:30:51
would capture crazy motion where the pellet starts to crush on
00:30:55
the dice. Okay, so not so artistic, but very interesting,
00:30:59
technically. And it was like GE cameras have come a long way.
00:31:03
That's really cool. And it was more of my, I guess, my
00:31:05
technical mindset that was interested in the in the science
00:31:08
and and all that. So I was like, okay, that's really cool. You
00:31:11
can really have fun with those things. No. And then I started
00:31:13
reading more magazines. And I got into just the technicalities
00:31:16
at the beginning was like, okay, and then I started reading the
00:31:21
reader's courier section of the magazine where people would send
00:31:25
photos and, and the journalist would critique the photos. There
00:31:29
was like, Okay, that's interesting composition that I
00:31:31
started to get into it. And but at the time, it was just, it was
00:31:36
just land photography, but I was really getting hooked. And, and
00:31:40
then Linda told me this this time when we were booking our
00:31:43
tickets to Australia, and she said, Hey, did you know that
00:31:45
Australia was really good for diving? And it was like, Okay,
00:31:49
I've always been fascinated by the water. I've always I grew up
00:31:53
in Africa, in in a place where I was not far from the sea. But we
00:31:57
only had big rolling waves. So there was never a place where
00:32:01
the weather was clear for me to go snorkelling. So I've always
00:32:04
meant all my childhood to go and see what was there. There was no
00:32:08
clear weather for me to go. Work in Africa, Cameroon.
00:32:12
Matt Waters: Oh, really? That's a random one. How do you end up
00:32:15
there?
00:32:16
Nicholas Remy: My parents were working there. Okay. Yeah. So
00:32:19
childhood in Cameroon, there was a river by the place we, in my
00:32:23
early years, we were living in, in the, in the bush in the
00:32:26
jungle, there was a nice river with nice fish going there.
00:32:30
Sometimes a snake, sometimes a few other animals. But again,
00:32:34
the river was murky, and not very safe to swim into for other
00:32:37
reasons as well. So crocodiles and stuff like that, right? So
00:32:41
so I've had all these childhood where I wanted to get in the
00:32:44
water, but I couldn't. So the only thing I could do is just,
00:32:46
you know, walk on the rocks, look in the puddles be like, oh,
00:32:49
there's a fish. There's a crab and being excited about that. So
00:32:52
when you say diving, I was like, Yeah, that sounds really scary.
00:32:55
But at some point, I do want to do something like that. I do.
00:32:59
And I was getting hooked. We've learned photography. And before
00:33:03
we could go to Australia, I had an internship for six months
00:33:06
working in, in an IT company as well in Paris back in the days.
00:33:10
And so I was having was going to spend six months, every day, one
00:33:14
hour commute in the in the metro train. And I thought, Okay, I've
00:33:19
learned a fair bit about photography, with magazines, and
00:33:22
all that. If I'm going to go diving, I might as well learn
00:33:25
underwater photography. And then I picked the first book, a book
00:33:29
with 150 pages of underwater photography. And I read it in
00:33:33
the in the daily commute, and was like, that's fantastic.
00:33:36
That's I was really getting hooked. And I finished the first
00:33:40
book, which was like the beginner level book. Then I
00:33:42
bought the advanced book, and I read it as well. It was like,
00:33:46
wow, split shots, macro shots, before getting in the water
00:33:49
before getting certified. Yeah. Yeah, so I was I was getting
00:33:54
hooked in a very twisted way. But yeah, by the time I got
00:33:58
certified, I knew how to use an underwater camera. I just didn't
00:34:01
have one.
00:34:02
Matt Waters: Yeah, that's, that's the problem. What was the
00:34:05
first one you got?
00:34:07
Nicholas Remy: It was a good one, though. It was the Nikon D
00:34:10
300. I was I was so so hooked. So we had a little comeback to
00:34:16
the camera, and I for for our most of our time in Australia.
00:34:20
But then I had a side job, you know, after the university so I
00:34:25
could save a bit of money. And I was clear that I wanted the
00:34:28
proper DSLR so I saved all that money. And then when I could
00:34:32
finally afford it, bang Detroit 100 And like five lenses. Yeah.
00:34:37
And it was so crazy excited about, you know, all the
00:34:40
photography time that whenever I would go somewhere, had a bag
00:34:43
full of all the lenses, which is totally nonsense because there's
00:34:47
no place where you're going to use a macro lens, a short macro
00:34:50
lens, a long macro lens, a wide angle lens, a fisheye lens and a
00:34:52
portrait lens and a telephoto lens, right. But it was carrying
00:34:55
the whole thing. Sometimes it was like gee, it's really heavy.
00:35:00
One time we were stepping in on the way back to France with Lena
00:35:03
in Hong Kong for a few days, we had a bit of vacation in Hong
00:35:06
Kong. And I loved the town. We had fantastic time there. But
00:35:11
then I realised that it was really hot. And it was carrying
00:35:13
what 10 kilogrammes of photography gear in my backpack.
00:35:17
And there was not a fly. No, Hong Kong is very concrete,
00:35:22
right? There's no birds. There's no, I couldn't see much flies in
00:35:25
the city. And then I realised, man, maybe I don't need that
00:35:28
macro lenses to macro lenses in my bag after all.
00:35:31
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've done the same after I've
00:35:35
travelled with all these lenses. And you spent two or three weeks
00:35:39
away and come back and realise you've only used one lens in the
00:35:41
entire time that you've been away? Yeah, yeah. It's a steep
00:35:45
learning curve.
00:35:47
Nicholas Remy: We got, I guess you said the beginning when you
00:35:49
when you get when you get the hook, right? You see all those
00:35:52
nice photos. You know, Sky photography, animals, portraits,
00:35:57
black and white weddings, wildlife in Israel, those things
00:36:01
and when you do everything, then you realise that good especially
00:36:05
somehow to get really good at something.
00:36:08
Matt Waters: I've learned very quickly to think about what I'm
00:36:11
going out to do. And there's always gonna be something you
00:36:14
want us to photograph that you've got the right lens for,
00:36:16
but it's better than carrying that 10 kilos. Yeah.
00:36:22
Nicholas Remy: How did you get into photography yourself?
00:36:25
Matt Waters: Very similar to you to be honest. Yeah. Yeah, I
00:36:27
didn't go balls out and spend 1000s on a nick on straightaway
00:36:30
though, I've got a GoPro. But as a kid, I did exactly the same.
00:36:34
My dad, he played around with photography and enjoyed it. And
00:36:38
he had an old DSLR. And I used to play around with it a little
00:36:42
bit. Never understood it. But every Christmas we'd get like a
00:36:46
disposable Polaroid or something like that in the Christmas
00:36:49
stocking. Or one of those? I don't know. How old are you? 39.
00:36:53
Okay, to remember the old disposable cameras that you
00:36:57
could mount like six bulb flashes on the top. And when
00:37:01
they got used they were gone. So he didn't have developed so
00:37:05
yeah, and he didn't give me when I got and 10 years. 10 years on
00:37:08
it. Yeah, camera. Yeah, gotta go. But yeah, I used to get
00:37:12
those as well. And we'd have the disappointment of taking the the
00:37:17
old rails or the old rolls of instead of camera to film,
00:37:22
sorry, to the local pharmacy and wait a week to see what you've
00:37:26
got. You know that a 36 You'd get to two photos that are okay,
00:37:30
that's about it. So it never really grabbed me in a great way
00:37:36
until I started going underwater. And I say I got a I
00:37:40
got a GoPro. In fact, it was the year I left the military and
00:37:48
went on a six month diving holiday on my own just headed
00:37:51
for Thailand. Right. And I took a GoPro with me it was the first
00:37:55
GoPro that I bought.
00:37:56
Nicholas Remy: Oh, that's when you went you became divemaster.
00:37:58
And you started teaching, right?
00:38:00
Matt Waters: Yeah, just Yeah, I was on holiday and then just
00:38:03
randomly got asked if I'd like to take over a dive master
00:38:07
position eventually. And instead of going back to the UK after
00:38:11
six months holiday, I thought, Okay, I'm gonna stay there's
00:38:14
beers, beaches, women in bikinis living the dream that I had to
00:38:19
I. But yeah, so I started with a GoPro, and then it was or maybe
00:38:28
in 2015 2016, something like that. I picked up a Canon g7 X
00:38:33
mark two. And that's when I started to kind of focus on what
00:38:40
I was trying to do with it. And eventually ended up with a
00:38:44
couple of strobes, which completely threw me off. First
00:38:47
god knows how long the road Yeah, and then about a year, 18
00:38:51
months, no 18 months ago now, I love the camera, Canon M six
00:38:55
mark two. And that just threw me straight back into learning how
00:39:01
to use a camera again, because you go from a compact to a, you
00:39:04
know, a mirrorless and everything changes.
00:39:08
Nicholas Remy: So, it's the next level of complexity, right? It is
00:39:11
Matt Waters: yeah. And you kind of get up to the I got up to the
00:39:14
maximum that I could do with a compact and then thought, right?
00:39:17
I've got to take the leap. I'm gonna get a mirrorless because
00:39:21
it's it's lighter and smaller, easier to carry on overseas
00:39:23
trips, all that kind of stuff, blah, blah, blah. And stumped
00:39:26
for that one look good camera. But it put me right back into
00:39:29
the novice group again. Yeah,
00:39:31
Nicholas Remy: it's I remember when when I finally got my D
00:39:35
free Android, my first DSLR the thing we had before was like,
00:39:38
back at the time it was popular type of camera it was called the
00:39:41
bridge camera. So it's like a compact with with a very big
00:39:44
zoom lens, basically. And it was very easy to use. You know, you
00:39:48
would see what you're shooting basically the lecture on the
00:39:50
compact camera, like on a compact camera. And the day I
00:39:54
started using the DSLR was like gee, there's a steep learning
00:39:57
curve, but same thing with your mirrorless cameras those things
00:40:00
have so many options, you can do everything manually. But until
00:40:03
you figure out those options, and the SEC, they become like,
00:40:06
second nature that you you're familiar with them? Well, you're
00:40:09
going to miss shots, you're going to be having to practice a
00:40:11
lot before you get different potential basically. Yeah,
00:40:14
Matt Waters: yeah, I've kind of, I've got the, I think I'm about
00:40:18
70% of the way with a wide angle. And I'm still way below
00:40:24
50% of the way with a macro here. So you know, that's why
00:40:29
I'm going to go into a couple of dives this week and just focus
00:40:31
on the macro and play around with a straight positionings and
00:40:34
the camera settings and all that kind of stuff.
00:40:38
Nicholas Remy: Yeah, give them guidance would be a good place
00:40:39
for for practising those skills. Because if you did have to
00:40:43
position the strobes in a way that you get your subject not
00:40:46
too much of the world around it to clear photos and all that so
00:40:50
it's a good when you I guess when you dive in in a lovely
00:40:53
tropical place, you go to valley for example. You don't have to
00:40:57
position your strobe so perfectly, as long as you get
00:41:00
some light on the subject, you're good to go. Basically,
00:41:02
you go to Clifton gardens, while getting the light isn't just one
00:41:06
thing and then you want to minimise how much excavator
00:41:08
you've got and and that definitely is a good way to
00:41:11
sharpen your skills. Definitely then doing that in Clifton
00:41:15
gardens next time you go to bury your goodness, where tropical
00:41:17
Galapagos and places like that you're going to take fantastic
00:41:20
Matt Waters: shots. Yes, hopefully. Otherwise, it's a
00:41:22
very expensive wasted trip.
00:41:26
Nicholas Remy: If you want to double up on, you know, on the
00:41:29
on the landings, the underwater club is coming soon. Yeah.
00:41:34
Matt Waters: I'm always up for learning. I think. Even if
00:41:38
you're a master of something new, there's always something
00:41:39
else you're gonna learn
00:41:40
Nicholas Remy: that there is an end, there's two things I've
00:41:44
noticed not only in my way of learning, but with chatting with
00:41:47
friends that have diverse photographers as well is when
00:41:53
you don't practice some skills for a while. It just you know,
00:41:55
it just just goes away. I mean, doesn't go really away. But it
00:42:00
wears out a little bit sitter's. And I find myself even when I
00:42:03
was learning everything by books, if let's say I was doing
00:42:07
macro for a long time at home because there was only a macro
00:42:09
to shoot. And then there was going on a trip where I might
00:42:11
see Manta rays or big rugby wideangle I would go back to my
00:42:15
book and I would relearn basically or refresh whatever I
00:42:18
learned by you before basically nontheless trip. Yeah. And and
00:42:23
that's one of the things I like with with the underwater club is
00:42:26
that I think lots of people are doing, you know, infrequent
00:42:31
diving, or infrequent in the sense that they will go in a
00:42:35
tropical destination once in a year or twice in a year maybe.
00:42:38
And I think having the ocean you know, to go back to your
00:42:41
courses, go back to your learning, when you need it
00:42:43
happening is going to be pretty, pretty handy in those cases.
00:42:47
Matt Waters: So have you have you structured the delivery? How
00:42:52
many videos are there? How many different levels? What kind of
00:42:55
people? Is it targeting?
00:42:58
Nicholas Remy: I've got in total? About 40? Lessons?
00:43:02
Matt Waters: 40? Yes. fucky. Now you have been busy. I've been
00:43:05
busy.
00:43:06
Nicholas Remy: 40 Each of the lesson is split into smaller
00:43:09
videos as well. Okay, so how many think more than 100? In
00:43:13
total? Probably okay. But the reason for that is? Well, first
00:43:17
of all underwater photography is complex and on wide topic, as
00:43:20
you know. And the other thing is, I wanted to make sure that
00:43:23
the you know, the videos would be the knowledge would be well,
00:43:26
you'd be able to consume it in a bite sized format. So if you're
00:43:31
at home, you know, after days of work, you're on your couch, you
00:43:34
have time you want to spend one hour learning underwater
00:43:37
photography, pop your TV open, open the Android app on your
00:43:41
phone airplay, and you're watching the big screen, you're
00:43:43
relaxing, yeah, but if you're on the daily commute, and you just
00:43:46
have 10 minutes of your time, then most of the time, the
00:43:49
subsections of a lesson are less than 10 minutes long. So there's
00:43:53
always a time where you can spend a few minutes if you have
00:43:56
a few minutes to spare. That's time you can spend learning or
00:43:59
practising in the world of photography. So that's about,
00:44:04
you know, the volume of the content. And the I guess the way
00:44:07
I've structured it, the way that the way I've digested in pieces,
00:44:11
in terms of structure, asked myself a lot of questions about
00:44:15
what's the right way to present underwater photography. And I
00:44:18
think I think that there is not one way. I think we all there's
00:44:23
no there's various ways you can learn. Some people will start
00:44:26
with macro, some people will go wide angle, some people will not
00:44:30
choose a strobe or video light at all for years, because maybe
00:44:33
they should very close to the surface. Some people well,
00:44:38
there's various learning paths. And the way I've presented it
00:44:42
then is to say there's an app, the lessons are presented as a
00:44:47
map. So you're looking at a mind map basically, where you can see
00:44:51
themes. So a theme might be wideangle. A theme might be
00:44:55
lighting as a skill and the world lighting. Another one
00:44:58
might be the equipment the photography equipments. And
00:45:01
within those themes, you can see with the lessons positions on
00:45:05
the map how they relate to each other. So for example, before
00:45:09
you start learning about how to turn a fish ID shot into an
00:45:14
actual portrait with character, you might want to learn how to
00:45:17
position your strobes. And you might ask yourself, Hey, do I
00:45:21
want to use once robot to strobes? So the residents are
00:45:25
arranged and the mindmap in a way that tells you that you
00:45:28
probably want to have those skills before but you don't have
00:45:31
to, because perhaps you know, some of those things. Or you
00:45:34
just want straight to understand what are the artistic
00:45:37
considerations in making a portrait, as opposed to the
00:45:40
technicalities of hey, one stroke, two strokes how to
00:45:43
position the strobes. So I really wanted to organise it in
00:45:46
a way that no one feels they have to go in a special order.
00:45:50
Yeah, they see the map, the map is clickable. So you can click
00:45:53
and have a pop up telling you, hey, this is what it is about.
00:45:57
And then if you click you have more details about the contents
00:45:59
in exactly what you're going to learn. You have guidance on
00:46:02
whether you should know, this piece of information before
00:46:06
taking this lesson to make the most of it or not. And, again,
00:46:11
this is a freely I always say free flowing is free flowing.
00:46:15
Yeah.
00:46:16
Matt Waters: It sounds fantastic. Thank you, quite
00:46:18
frankly, I've not seen it yet. But it sounds fantastic. I'm a
00:46:21
very visual learner. Yeah. And that that kind of mapping, I
00:46:29
would say, excites me over the idea of having chapter sub
00:46:32
chapter in the least watch this, watch this, watch this
00:46:34
Nicholas Remy: 100% Here, I think for learners like you, I'm
00:46:38
the same. And I think most people benefit from having a
00:46:41
visual layout of how the concepts connect to each other,
00:46:44
the mind map really to say, okay, because when you start,
00:46:47
you're like, Hey, Mr. diver, I want to I want to learn
00:46:50
photography. You don't know what you don't know. Yeah. You know,
00:46:53
how do you know that? How would you know that? You know, there
00:46:57
are specific skill sets and techniques and best practices in
00:47:01
working with a model. You see beautiful photos of wreck with a
00:47:04
model looking positioned in the right place with the leg
00:47:07
straight and all that. If you don't know any better, you're
00:47:09
like, well, that person must have just been taking photos of
00:47:13
diver passing by. Absolutely not. All those good shots.
00:47:16
They're all staged, most of them are staged. And you don't know
00:47:20
those things if you're a beginner. But if you're starting
00:47:22
off and you're like, okay, here is everything I can learn. Well,
00:47:27
I'm keen for whitening, go to whitening go sounds good. As a
00:47:29
start, you got to wait and get your light. Okay, close focus,
00:47:32
wide angle. All right, shallow water wide angle, you can see
00:47:35
the themes that you could get started. There was a reason for
00:47:39
camera settings for an angle. If you just want a bit of technical
00:47:41
guidance on the settings that would work well. And then you're
00:47:43
like working with Moodle? Ah, there is such a thing. You have
00:47:47
to work with the Moodle. Interesting. What is it about
00:47:49
you go there, and then you realise that there's a hand
00:47:51
signals. There is best practice in how the Moodle position
00:47:55
themselves where they were, where they look, and all the
00:47:58
things?
00:47:58
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah. I mean, ours do you think you've put
00:48:01
into this in a year and a half.
00:48:06
Nicholas Remy: The thing is, I don't think I know too much.
00:48:09
Basically, I think I'm at 30 minutes of, of work for one
00:48:15
minute of video. And I've got 16 hours of video in total. And
00:48:20
that's just the beginning. Because people joining you and
00:48:23
the workload as becoming members. We'll also have access
00:48:26
to monthly webinars where we get together we talk about
00:48:30
particular topic, we dive into some techniques, we exchange, we
00:48:32
do things like that, so that there's going to be more, more,
00:48:37
let's say more video contents. And I really want to make it
00:48:41
something that lives for example, because the day that
00:48:47
especially technical aspects, but not only that are going to
00:48:50
become things are going to change. So for example, there is
00:48:55
a course where it's all about photography equipments. So I
00:49:00
cover basically every single bit of kit that you might find in an
00:49:03
hour, the other photographers bag, because again, you don't
00:49:06
know what you don't know, why would someone need to focus
00:49:08
light? Why do they have arms? What do they need floats for and
00:49:12
all those things. So I cover all those bits. In each and every
00:49:15
lesson, I explain what are the specs that you find in one of
00:49:18
the things like a stroke, for example, what are the important
00:49:22
ones, so that you know, as a, as a consumer as a photographer,
00:49:26
you're equipped to decide what's important when you're going to
00:49:30
buy your stroke. And what was it what are we seeing again?
00:49:36
Talking about equipment.
00:49:39
Matt Waters: Yeah. We're talking about the the add ons, so you're
00:49:45
gonna have the monthly webinars and stuff like that.
00:49:47
Nicholas Remy: Yeah, correct. And in one of those lessons, I'm
00:49:50
talking about cameras. So I'm going through the various types
00:49:53
of cameras that you might use for underwater photography, your
00:49:55
GoPro your compact with DSLR mirrorless and I'm coming
00:50:00
Preparing them side by sides for the various, you know, let's say
00:50:05
create area, autofocus, image quality, things like that. And
00:50:09
I'm seeing for example, as of today for underwater photography
00:50:13
DSLRs have an advantage over mirrorless for such and such
00:50:16
things. But I know very well that next year, I might record
00:50:20
the video again to say something different because the technology
00:50:22
is catching up. Yeah. So this is a big body of knowledge, but I'm
00:50:27
going to make it to evolve it as well over time. Yeah.
00:50:30
Matt Waters: And when people go, they've got to give allowance
00:50:32
for the advance of technology, because no one can keep up with
00:50:35
it. It's so fucking fast. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Very
00:50:42
interesting. So you mentioned that the underwater club is
00:50:47
going to be a membership. So is it subscription based?
00:50:51
Nicholas Remy: Yes, it's going to be a subscription base.
00:50:53
Because I thought about different models, different ways
00:50:56
of doing it. But I really think that as you want the knowledge
00:51:02
to stick, as the sort of photos that you're going to take, over
00:51:07
time, are going to change when you travel, you need to be able
00:51:11
to go back to the knowledge and the learnings. And so that's
00:51:15
the, that's the weight. People, they basically get access to the
00:51:18
content, they become members, this gives gives them access to
00:51:22
the courses. And this they become part of a community as
00:51:25
well. So they get access to the monthly webby now. And there is
00:51:29
also something very close to my heart as part of the underwater
00:51:32
club that that will be for members. There is a dedicated
00:51:36
members forum, where we exchange about photography, but I want to
00:51:42
do it in a very specific way. I want this to be a place where
00:51:45
we're going to give each other constructive feedback on our
00:51:48
photography, because I think that is a massive, massive,
00:51:52
massive way to progress. Yes. And so that that would be
00:51:56
something very important. At the beginning, I would probably
00:51:59
myself be doing most of the feedbacks. So today, I do it in
00:52:04
a one to one basis, someone can hire me for a one hour two hour
00:52:08
coaching session, we talked about underwater photography.
00:52:11
But I think there's a lot of learning that can be had from
00:52:16
reading a constructive critique of someone else photos by first
00:52:20
person. So there will be that components. But I also want over
00:52:25
time to take on board over members of the club with me to
00:52:30
be concrete to formulate critique themselves. Yeah.
00:52:33
Because I think even if you're, you know, very beginner in
00:52:37
underwater photography, of course, the critique, if it's
00:52:39
given from a place of care with respect, it's perfect. It's very
00:52:43
useful. But you're a very experienced photographer
00:52:45
yourself. spending the time to formulate a constructive
00:52:49
critique onto someone else photos is also a great way to
00:52:52
keep on learning. Yes. And I think that's, that's going to be
00:52:57
a very beneficial, like a virtuous circle that would be
00:53:01
taking place between members.
00:53:02
Matt Waters: I think that benefit is circular as well,
00:53:04
because a lot of people are too over critical of their own
00:53:09
shots. Yes. So being able to critique other people's work,
00:53:15
and then hear honest and open opinions of their work rather
00:53:19
than Oh, that's good, man. Yes, you know, and just make you
00:53:24
rethink and reevaluate, actually, I'm a little bit
00:53:29
better than what I thought I was, you know,
00:53:32
Nicholas Remy: yeah, it's too is too easy. When you when you get
00:53:35
a hang on to the technicalities, to see the defects to say out,
00:53:40
then the composition is not right. You're not exactly on the
00:53:44
third, or it's a little bit overexposed there. Or here,
00:53:47
there's a fish to take these cats. But look at competition
00:53:50
winning shots, in many competitions among the top
00:53:53
winners, you see the effects on the photos. Yeah. So in that,
00:53:56
that's, that's the, that's the artistic sensitivity that we all
00:54:00
have, that we can exchange when we critique each other. But when
00:54:03
you're on your own watching your photos, you don't get those
00:54:05
things.
00:54:06
Matt Waters: So he tried to tell me that those awards that you've
00:54:09
won, you've got defects on your photos.
00:54:11
Nicholas Remy: I do sometimes.
00:54:12
Matt Waters: I do. Sometimes I can say
00:54:15
Nicholas Remy: I do sometimes. But I'm a bit like you I'm over
00:54:20
critical of myself. Yeah. And there are photos where, where
00:54:24
you know, I'm like, now, Miss, there's a fish shark tail. I've
00:54:28
got a photo, for example, that did very well in a few contests.
00:54:32
It's like a big school of greatness shots in southwest
00:54:35
rocks. The lighting is great. The look of the shark, you know
00:54:40
the layout. Everything is good, but there is one shark in the
00:54:44
corner. Who has a tail cats with this 20 sharks in the photos.
00:54:48
Yeah, for that reason. When I took that photo, I was like,
00:54:52
man, you know, stop making the final case. Fortunately, I
00:54:55
didn't delete it. And then as I was building the underwater
00:54:58
club, and I spent nearly two yours going back into my photos
00:55:01
because I needed to find materials to illustrate what I
00:55:04
was teaching, basically. And I went back to our photos and I'm
00:55:07
like, Hey, wait a minute, it still looks quite okay, this
00:55:11
photo actually. And some friends I'm like, Okay, actually these
00:55:14
10 photos of sharks from Southwest rocks. They they look
00:55:17
good, actually. Maybe not competition material, but they
00:55:20
look really good. So I asked a few friends in a WhatsApp group.
00:55:23
Hey, what do you think if there was one photo that stands out?
00:55:27
What do you think this is? A few people pointed this one. And
00:55:30
then a few others pointed over photos. And the last one I was
00:55:33
like, Yeah, well, I'll try the other ones in competitions this
00:55:37
year. And next year, I'll try this one that I'm still not
00:55:40
convinced about the shark. We've got Tellarites Elia. Well, I
00:55:45
entered it in ocean for the rest of the year. And I won first
00:55:49
place in the conservation hope category. And I think that
00:55:52
contest is I think it's the biggest contest in terms of
00:55:55
ocean imagery in the world. I think. So there was like, man,
00:55:58
okay, I can still see the defect on the photo myself. But having
00:56:03
listen to other people telling me no, it's really good. The
00:56:05
emotion, the emotion is excuses to defect basically.
00:56:09
Matt Waters: Well, that just that just bolsters what I just
00:56:12
said about people being over critical of their own work. And
00:56:17
by the way, well done,
00:56:18
Nicholas Remy: thank you. But there's two sides to I think
00:56:21
there's two sides to the story about the emotion you put to
00:56:24
your work, right? Being over critical, definitely looking at
00:56:27
the defects because you want ideally, a shot with no defects
00:56:30
to go to a competition and being fixated on that you forget the
00:56:33
positive vibe of the emotion that you have in the shot. But
00:56:36
then the other way around, is sometimes you get too
00:56:39
emotionally attached to a shot because you struggled so hard to
00:56:42
create that shot. You know, like that's the shot. That is the
00:56:45
best. That's the one I'm going to enter in competitions. That's
00:56:49
the one I'm going to pitch to magazines. That's That's the
00:56:51
shot. And sometimes you also need that critical aid from
00:56:54
someone else to say, yeah, it's sharp. It's called a fool. It's
00:56:58
a great animal. But yeah, it's like, a good ad shot. Really?
00:57:04
That's it doesn't stand out. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the
00:57:07
wow factor. Yep. There is a photo for example, we, which and
00:57:11
again, I can honestly tell all my love and my admiration for
00:57:15
that photo, because it's not mine. It's a photo by Linda. We
00:57:18
were having a fantastic dive for once in the Mediterranean Sea.
00:57:22
In a place where the local fishermen, the local
00:57:25
professional fisherman decided with each other. You know what,
00:57:27
let's make it a Marine Park. Let's stop fishing in that place
00:57:32
for 10 years and see what happens. And long story short,
00:57:36
it was fantastic. And they decided to do it again for 10
00:57:38
years. So we went to the dive sites. And in the med you can
00:57:42
see sometimes the Mediterranean Cooper, it's called the brown
00:57:45
grouper, dusky grouper, very iconic fish from the mid
00:57:49
atlantic because it's been over fished. It's like a puppy coming
00:57:52
to see you in the water. So at the time, when people didn't
00:57:54
know better, they were just bear fishing into extinction. So now
00:57:58
you see more of them because they're they've been productive
00:58:00
for a few years. But long story short, if I can make long story
00:58:04
short, I'm not sure about that.
00:58:05
Matt Waters: That's alright, we go all the time. And
00:58:09
Nicholas Remy: we go to the to the safe sites. And at some
00:58:12
point, I mean, that was memorable. At some points. We
00:58:16
see two military and groupers. Two big ones, they were males,
00:58:19
because they become males at the end of their the life as they
00:58:22
grow. And they were doing something and never saw usually
00:58:25
when because they must still be a fair bit of poaching
00:58:30
happening. Even though they're protected, they tend to stay
00:58:33
away from you. Okay, we will reverse not so much. But with
00:58:36
regular divers, they do take the distances. In that place, though
00:58:40
they couldn't care less about the divers, they were hammering
00:58:42
each other for basically the two groupers they were fighting from
00:58:46
a distance when you get the photo you you could think that
00:58:48
they're kissing but they're certainly not the fighting head
00:58:51
on head. And you could hear the noise in the water bang. And you
00:58:55
could see you could see the fish scales really pop crazy action.
00:58:59
And Lina was holding the camera that day she was taking photos I
00:59:03
was just you know over enjoying myself pointing creatures of
00:59:06
being a model. And when I saw the action, you never know how
00:59:09
long it's going to last for so you have to you have to get the
00:59:12
shots. And I saw the action I saw I was I'm like there is no
00:59:16
way I'm going to be able to swim out before she takes the shots.
00:59:19
She will have heard from my body in the shot. So I said okay,
00:59:22
well what's the other option is that I go in there and I
00:59:24
positioned myself perfectly. I make sure I look in the right
00:59:27
place. I do all these things right. And that's what I did. So
00:59:31
you've got a further word to groupers their head on head
00:59:34
symmetry call centre of the frame and I'm coming in the
00:59:39
middle, slightly sideways and they look right in the middle of
00:59:43
the fight perfect position all that it's a perfect shot in my
00:59:47
view and very attached to it then I'm in Alexei turret as
00:59:50
well. But never win some competition. It never it never
00:59:54
succeed, successes successes and and I'm not sure why some people
00:59:58
tell me are so great. Natural History moments that she's
01:00:02
photographed. But there's you diver here, you're spoiling the
01:00:05
thing. And I'm like, well, there's lots of photos where
01:00:08
with animals and the diver but I don't know something there
01:00:11
doesn't work. Yeah, but we have so much emotional attachment.
01:00:14
And every now and then we still enter it in a competition to
01:00:17
see, you know that with that emotional attachment tree, you
01:00:21
can hang it on the wall. Yes, that we can certainly do
01:00:25
Matt Waters: that, in fact that one thing I need to do. And I've
01:00:27
never done it. Photos I've got I've never actually, in fact, it
01:00:32
was one of my friends here in Sydney, who he was the first
01:00:36
dude to get one printed up. Yeah, okay. Yeah, in his
01:00:41
apartment as first time. It's one of my photos in real life
01:00:44
instead of digital.
01:00:45
Nicholas Remy: How did you feel when you say it's brilliant?
01:00:47
Matt Waters: It's great. Yeah, it's awesome. So I thought I
01:00:50
think we need to do it.
01:00:51
Nicholas Remy: Yeah, I think it's, it's a thing you know, you
01:00:54
have to do, but but do it because you will feel great. And
01:00:57
I think there's lots of, there's lots of photos that look even
01:01:02
better in print, then even better in print than they look
01:01:05
in real life. I have two screens at home. And when I'm pixel
01:01:11
editing a photo, there is one screen when a photo might start
01:01:15
to look a little bit. I don't know, noisy, doesn't look very
01:01:19
good. In terms of details. On the other screen, it looks
01:01:21
better. Yeah, different resolution. But then most of the
01:01:25
time, if I print, there will be some small defects on small
01:01:28
noise that are just smooth in the way by the printing process.
01:01:31
Yeah. And when you're free print, you've made a good print
01:01:34
big prints. Not going to stare at the photo from five
01:01:37
centimetres, right? You'd be standing back, stand back and
01:01:40
look at it. And then you're going to enjoy what you see.
01:01:43
Yeah, yeah. Gee, I'm the worst. Interviewee I don't bring any
01:01:47
beer. I don't bring any photo shaver.
01:01:48
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah, your shit.
01:01:52
Nicholas Remy: But again, thank you for a beer afterwards, if
01:01:54
you have time. Yeah.
01:01:56
Matt Waters: In the meantime, I'll just drink the one beer
01:01:58
that's left to do lovely stuff.
01:02:02
Nicholas Remy: Got all the thinking to do, I'm just
01:02:03
chatting and repairing and all that, oh,
01:02:05
Matt Waters: don't worry about that. I can, it's that's the
01:02:08
beauty of of doing a knot and not doing it live, we can just
01:02:13
cut it out. So when people get nervous, and there's pregnant
01:02:17
pauses, or they do this, and they move away from the
01:02:18
microphone, we can just redo total easing slowly. So how do
01:02:23
Nicholas Remy: you know if there's a sound issue with the
01:02:26
easy? Is it telling us rubber? Just editing afterwards?
01:02:31
Matt Waters: Yeah, um, what the routine that we do is, I mean,
01:02:35
obviously, we've got the headphones on here. So I'm
01:02:37
listening to what's going on with your microphone, and
01:02:40
background noises like this little fan and all that kind of
01:02:42
stuff. And I just make a mental note. And then once we've
01:02:48
finished today, Rod, will send me the raw tracks from tomorrow.
01:02:56
And I'll listen through to them again, while I'm working at home
01:02:58
on a PC and pick up those little bits and pieces that I want
01:03:02
removed. So I just note the time, and then send the data
01:03:06
back to Rod. He takes out he does all the editing, and then
01:03:10
balances all the noises and otters, all that magical stuff
01:03:13
that needs to do and sends me back adds on the intro and outro
01:03:16
and sends me back the the final edit stuff. Yeah, it's, it's
01:03:22
quite well,
01:03:23
Nicholas Remy: I wish I had someone helping me with the
01:03:25
audio for all the, you know, for the lessons of recorded and then
01:03:28
sometimes I can't remember how many times you know, um, so I'm
01:03:32
doing that from from a study in my in our house. Yeah. In the
01:03:36
south of Sydney. And the number of odd noises that you've got at
01:03:40
home that you don't pick. Unless you're doing your recording
01:03:43
sound. I told him at some point, did you hear the parents? Like
01:03:48
no, did you hear the planes? They owe the planes? No. Did you
01:03:51
hear the people working there? No. Did you hear the neighbour
01:03:53
and you don't pay attention to those random noises unless
01:03:56
you're like, I need silence here.
01:03:59
Matt Waters: Have you? Have you? Have you created a box around
01:04:01
your microphones so that you can kind of eliminate those? No,
01:04:04
Nicholas Remy: because I'm, you know, I'm wearing the hoodie.
01:04:06
Oh, you're on the rodeo. Yeah, I need to change my setup because
01:04:10
I did this way because there will be times where I'm finding
01:04:13
myself holding a housing and moving some straws and all that
01:04:16
and that wouldn't be practical to have something in front of
01:04:19
me. But in reality, the housing thing is like one every 10
01:04:23
lessons most of the time and talking. I'm displaying photos
01:04:26
next to me I'm displaying talking points, but
01:04:30
Matt Waters: you know what you could do? Have a chat with
01:04:32
Roger. Yeah. Because at the times when you need to do
01:04:35
something that you want to record you on messing about with
01:04:39
gear. You could come in here and use one of these microphones
01:04:42
here right there was plenty of space. Yeah, as we can see. I
01:04:46
just record it. And you've got no noise on the outside.
01:04:50
Nicholas Remy: Because he's got no the soundproofing.
01:04:53
Matt Waters: Yeah, that's it, right like these, these boards
01:04:56
that he's got, you know, they there's also the foam pad big
01:05:00
ones like wavy foam. When I do recordings at home, I tend to
01:05:05
I've got a, like a, almost like a milk crate, which I've put the
01:05:10
foam on the inside and that that sits with a microphone coming
01:05:14
through from the back. So the the microphone itself is
01:05:17
completely enhanced by foam around this section where I'm
01:05:21
tried right i right. So even with the window next to me if
01:05:25
someone's outside and they walking past or a dog yapping at
01:05:28
the microphone doesn't pick it up.
01:05:29
Nicholas Remy: Great. Okay.
01:05:32
Matt Waters: All little little tricks
01:05:33
Nicholas Remy: or tricks? You know, I've learned, I've learned
01:05:37
for me myself, I've done a few things I've learned Elementor
01:05:39
and all those things. I might as well learn how to do proper
01:05:42
sound recording.
01:05:42
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah. Um, so I'm scratching my ass with the
01:05:46
Elementor. At the moment.
01:05:47
Nicholas Remy: It should be more intuitive, right? Sometimes
01:05:50
you're like list of bullet points, and the bullets doesn't
01:05:53
align with the point. And you're like, that's what you do for a
01:05:56
living man. Yeah. Why can't you do each
01:05:59
Matt Waters: one pack of faffing about with the flex boxes and
01:06:03
loot carousels? They're a great idea. Yeah. And so, templates.
01:06:07
But, you know, if you make a template, it's a template, it's
01:06:10
never going to change. You know, you can't, you can't use the
01:06:14
same template on a different page and edit it because it's
01:06:17
going to read it the other page as well. So I find it a bit
01:06:20
frustrating, a bit limited, but it's certainly better than what
01:06:23
it used to be.
01:06:24
Nicholas Remy: And yeah, I mean, generally you do what you can
01:06:26
you can be as beautiful pages this way. And again, I'm lucky
01:06:29
about Weebly now, because she's a bit nerdy yourself. And
01:06:33
there's a few situations where I'm like, he doesn't look good
01:06:36
at all. She's like, let me let me look at it. And since a kid,
01:06:40
she's been, you know, doing projects, like like a NAT, like
01:06:43
a display, like stuff like that. So she's very visual in that
01:06:45
sense. Yeah. Very artistic. And also, she's a bit nerdy. So
01:06:49
sometimes she does custom CSS for me. The giveaway thingy,
01:06:55
there's a carousel, which shows the prizes, like good strobes
01:06:59
and things and masks, stuff like that. And the carousel is a is a
01:07:05
WordPress widget, right? It's a plugin. Yeah. And those guys
01:07:09
don't know what they're thinking. But they serve the
01:07:11
carousel, and the images are shrink. So basically, you can
01:07:14
see the prices and you think that's okay. They're like, Oh,
01:07:17
yeah, willing to upgrade our software. Yeah, you should. But
01:07:19
I'm stuck. And then I looked at the initial survey, I might be
01:07:22
able to do some CSS, and then she did she pushed the whole
01:07:26
thing and it looks okay,
01:07:27
Matt Waters: brilliant. Okay, so when I get stuck, I'm going to
01:07:30
message you and ask for the boss lady. Lovely stuff. I hate what
01:07:40
we've gone. Oh, the giveaways. Yeah, let's let's talk about the
01:07:45
giveaways.
01:07:46
Nicholas Remy: So, yeah, like we said before, I'm super excited,
01:07:51
because the underwater club is about to go live in a few weeks
01:07:53
time. So by the end of March, people will be able to go on the
01:07:56
underwater club.com. And they will be able to see the courses,
01:08:01
see what's offered there and hopefully start their free trial
01:08:04
to see what it's like and become a member. But sorry,
01:08:07
Matt Waters: just jumping in have you start? Have you
01:08:09
selected a particular date that it's gonna go live?
01:08:13
Nicholas Remy: I think it's going to be most likely the 31st
01:08:16
of March, okay. It's probably the 31st of March, okay. But if
01:08:23
you go to the underwater club.com before, there's a
01:08:26
little surprise there. I'm running a giveaway to celebrate
01:08:30
the launch. And it's very simple to enter. It's a free giveaway.
01:08:34
You don't have to purchase anything. The only thing is you
01:08:36
have to enter your email address. join my mailing list,
01:08:39
basically. And this way, you will get notified when the
01:08:42
underwater flood goes live when there's events around the
01:08:44
underwater climate fix like that. And there's quite a few
01:08:48
nice prices for underwater photographers, at least
01:08:51
underwater. These are things that will appeal to underwater
01:08:54
photographers.
01:08:55
Matt Waters: Are we allowed to say what the price is 100% yet
01:08:58
go for it. Yeah.
01:08:59
Nicholas Remy: So the top price of the giveaway is a wonderful
01:09:02
premium top range rich wrap Flash Pro X stronger. So retro
01:09:09
is a European based company. They manufacture top quality
01:09:14
underwater strobes. So underwater flashes. And I myself
01:09:18
have been using almost exclusively a pair of their
01:09:21
flashes to address Flash Pro for the last two years. Most of the
01:09:28
world's I'm winning with underwater photos have been
01:09:30
used. I've been using these two strobes basically. And then
01:09:36
nearly jealous of whoever is going to win the price. Because
01:09:39
the strobe that retro is sponsoring for this giveaway is
01:09:43
actually even better. It's the X version. So it's basically the
01:09:46
strobe I use myself, but with an upgrade in terms of traffic, it
01:09:50
recycles. 20% quicker. There's a few nice things like that. But
01:09:54
the quality of light is fantastic. It's powerful.
01:09:57
There's a range of accessories you can fit into To destroy when
01:10:00
you want to go and get on gardens to be the new team, you
01:10:04
can focus the light, you can do lots of things around the around
01:10:06
the lights. So it's a fantastic store.
01:10:08
Matt Waters: What did the retailer
01:10:10
Nicholas Remy: didn't think it's like, nearly two grants nearly
01:10:13
$2, one
01:10:14
Matt Waters: stroller leash. So this is a giveaway.
01:10:18
Nicholas Remy: It's a giveaway. It's for free, sign me up pretty
01:10:21
big price.
01:10:21
Matt Waters: So I can I put in my 15 email addresses.
01:10:24
Nicholas Remy: You supposed to put one. But what you can do
01:10:26
though, what you can do is you put your email, and that gives
01:10:30
you a one entry. When free entry to the giveaway. I'm asking a
01:10:34
little questions to whomever wants to answer about what sort
01:10:37
of camera they're using for underwater photography. If you
01:10:39
answer that question, you get a second entry. And then if you
01:10:43
share the giveaway, by email, or by Facebook, you'll have your
01:10:46
own private link with friends and you get some friends to sign
01:10:49
up through your link. For each friend you recruit you get an
01:10:52
extra entry. That's awesome. So if you share a few people, then
01:10:55
you know you're a bit active with that you can raise your
01:10:57
chances dramatically
01:10:58
Matt Waters: on a the LinkedIn, because I've got quite a few
01:11:01
people. Yeah,
01:11:02
Nicholas Remy: I'm sure. So the underwater club.com. Yeah. And
01:11:06
yeah, that's pretty much it. Okay, so that's the first price.
01:11:08
But then the second price is. So basically with the prices, what
01:11:12
I did is I went to potential sponsors. And I decided to
01:11:17
approach sponsors that manufacture the gear that I use
01:11:20
myself, because I wanted people to win things that I'm items
01:11:24
that I'm sure are excellent for an underwater photographer. So
01:11:29
the second prize is a pair of things. So these are the
01:11:32
marriage 70 quadruplets? Oh yes, you know them, right.
01:11:36
Matt Waters: That's my second set. Yep.
01:11:38
Nicholas Remy: I think someone told me that these things. They
01:11:41
are like, probably the most popular things. I don't know if
01:11:44
it's on the planet. I don't want to make big statements like
01:11:46
that. But basically, if you go to a popular dive destination,
01:11:49
you'll see divemasters diving a lot doing 500 days a year.
01:11:53
That's the sort of things they're using, because they're
01:11:55
sort of rebel, right? Yeah. I love them personally, because as
01:11:59
a photographer, I need to do flutter kick sometimes if I
01:12:01
really want to dash through appearance, but if I go diving
01:12:05
in Clifton garden, sort of very mucky places like that. I do
01:12:08
frottage, so that I glide over the water and I don't stare up
01:12:12
at the bottom and you know, waste visibility and all that.
01:12:14
Yeah, and those things are excellent for both for both that
01:12:17
sort of thing. So so I think they're really good. So that's
01:12:20
the second price, then we've got a 200 euros voucher to use on a
01:12:25
retro online shop. So if you don't get destroyed, but you
01:12:29
still want to buy one or you want some accessories for your
01:12:31
strobe, you can use that as well. And then we've got a mask
01:12:35
Ameris mask, the ultra liquid skin vision masks are just super
01:12:40
comfortable. And I Oh, that's the one I use now. And that's
01:12:43
the first mask can use without any leak. Even if I forget to
01:12:47
shave the previous mask if it wasn't perfectly shaved, it was
01:12:51
a mess. And as I'm doing very, very long day for like three
01:12:54
hours, four hours. I can't have a leaking mask. That's so
01:12:57
uncomfortable. And this one doesn't leak. And he's very wide
01:13:00
vision as well. So good for you know, seeing you're finding your
01:13:03
subject, finding your whatever accessories, you've clicked on
01:13:06
your BCD and stuff like that. Yeah. And the last price is a
01:13:09
beautiful the underwater Club T shirt. The same I'm wearing
01:13:12
today. Yes.
01:13:14
Matt Waters: Very good, sir. Very good. Yeah, so everyone
01:13:18
who's listening in feet underwater club.com. We'll
01:13:21
repeat that we'll put in the show notes as well. Thanks. And
01:13:24
yeah, smash that out of the park 31st of March. So you're
01:13:28
hopefully going to be very busy from April onwards?
01:13:31
Nicholas Remy: Yes, yes, I think so. I'll be actually travelling
01:13:37
at the same time, because it's going to be it's going to be a
01:13:41
busy a busy month for me, at the end of the month, I'm going to
01:13:44
8x in Singapore, which is the time that we're launching the
01:13:48
underwater club as well. Okay. So but fortunately, as you know,
01:13:51
that there's there's, there's not only me working on this
01:13:54
Selena is going to is going to help me with administrating the
01:13:58
sites. If, if I'm basically something at edX and yeah, then
01:14:02
the month of April will be, will be very interesting. I can't, I
01:14:05
can't wait to have people you know, go there, experience it.
01:14:10
There's a trial that you can enter for free, you can start
01:14:13
for free when the club is live, so you can access everything for
01:14:16
seven days, without having to pay and this way you can test
01:14:20
that my style of teaching the format of the video, the pace,
01:14:25
everything feels right, you know, and then if you're
01:14:28
comfortable, then you stay and then you become a member. So I
01:14:32
was excited enough and you know, very keen to see people, you
01:14:35
know, going through the giveaway, starting to enter put
01:14:38
their email, ask me questions, sometimes watch the little
01:14:42
videos that I've put there to present the prices. I can't wait
01:14:46
to see people, you know, taking the courses interacting with
01:14:50
them, telling me what they think. I'm also asking at the
01:14:54
end of every lesson for feedback. So I want to keep this
01:14:57
improving over time. So if someone You know, sees that
01:15:01
maybe I could have delved into more details in one topic. I'm
01:15:05
quite a detail person. But if that's the case, that can always
01:15:08
be the case, I would love to get those feedbacks. If they weren't
01:15:12
fully sure about something, an explanation they gave, maybe it
01:15:15
wasn't so clear. Again, give me feedback. I want to improve it.
01:15:19
In any ways people can interact with me as well through the
01:15:21
underwater club will be there to help.
01:15:23
Matt Waters: So awesome. And are you are you having a standard
01:15:26
edX? You're here? Are you having a booth?
01:15:30
Nicholas Remy: No, I wouldn't be just there. I would be reporting
01:15:32
for the photo guide.
01:15:34
Matt Waters: Oh, really? Hmm. So you're going to be doing a bit
01:15:36
of microphone a bit or just
01:15:38
Nicholas Remy: I think you're going to visit a few standards
01:15:40
related to underwater photography, and check what are
01:15:43
the news there? And we'll write an article on the way back.
01:15:46
Okay. Yeah. And perhaps a few other things. But that's still
01:15:50
being considered. Yeah,
01:15:53
Matt Waters: I did get asked if I was going this year, and I
01:15:56
just can't worry on the price. I've got too much to do. But it
01:15:59
would have been would have been great to get in there and just
01:16:01
have a wander around like that. AWS tech. It's great to be in a
01:16:06
dive show. Right. And Singapore is probably one of the best ones
01:16:09
as well,
01:16:09
Nicholas Remy: I think so. I think so that would be my first
01:16:11
time going. But anyways, you're going those places, too. You
01:16:14
meet passionate people. You'll you network a little bit, you'll
01:16:19
find out about the latest tech. The latest. I'm going to love
01:16:24
it, I'm sure.
01:16:25
Matt Waters: Yeah. Have you got any Putney photos into a
01:16:28
competition? For IDEXX?
01:16:30
Nicholas Remy: I haven't yet but I mean to the WeChat
01:16:33
Matt Waters: effect so that they'll have a good display
01:16:35
wall? Yeah, I think so.
01:16:36
Nicholas Remy: And they've got some good prices as well. So
01:16:38
yeah, definitely want to try my luck.
01:16:40
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah. But you don't have to enter like
01:16:43
political competitions like Visa or anything like that anymore.
01:16:46
You can leave that as normal people.
01:16:54
I the rebreather that you're using, which one is it?
01:16:58
Nicholas Remy: Are you still okay? So for many years, I've
01:17:02
been diving exclusively with the river river. So Revo is a fully
01:17:08
technical repeater. That's the sort of thing you can if you put
01:17:11
some trail mix in there, you can go to 200 metres with it. Oh,
01:17:15
that's not my thing. I'm not a very deep diver. I really use
01:17:18
them for photography, and long dives. But for many years have
01:17:21
been diving exclusively the Revo. And then in 2016, Revo has
01:17:25
been acquired by Maurice. And I, being very passionate, we were
01:17:30
very something probably just after photography is the next
01:17:33
thing I'm passionate about. And I was thinking, hey, what's
01:17:37
going to happen with Revo, which was kind of small company at the
01:17:40
time. You know, it was like a side project by a Belgian
01:17:44
entrepreneur, this guy was getting a bit older, wanting to
01:17:47
retire, what was going to happen to river divers. And then
01:17:51
fantastic news in the industry, Marisa quires, Rivo Marisa quiet
01:17:55
river because they wanted to create a more recreational
01:17:58
river, but they needed to sort of get the expertise to do that.
01:18:03
And as a result, they came up with the horizon, which is a
01:18:06
more recreational, semi closed river. But the thing I love
01:18:12
about it is that there's lots of the design, the good design
01:18:15
ideas from areevo that have been incorporated into the horizon.
01:18:19
And now, David, you're raising as well.
01:18:20
Matt Waters: Okay. And the horizon is a semi closed
01:18:26
rebreather. Did you say? Yep. Okay. Do you want to explain
01:18:29
that to folks that probably don't know too much about CCR?
01:18:33
Nicholas Remy: Yeah, absolutely. So. So there's two types of rib
01:18:37
river essentially, fully closed rib River, like the Revo like
01:18:41
the inspiration like the case and those guys fully closed rib,
01:18:46
reverse, what they do is, it's all it all comes from the fact
01:18:49
that when you breathe, you inhale, let's say air, and in
01:18:54
air, you will have 21 person oxygen, and the oxygen is what
01:18:57
your body needs. That's what it metabolises. When you exhale,
01:19:02
there's still lots of oxygen left in the gas that you're
01:19:05
going to blow in the bubbles. Let's say if you had 21 person,
01:19:08
that would be maybe 1716 persons left. And the concept behind the
01:19:12
river river is to say, hey, let's not waste to 16 person and
01:19:15
we can probably find a way to reuse them. So a closed circuit
01:19:20
River, like the fully technical ones, what they do is they take
01:19:24
back the guests that you've exceeded instead of leaving the
01:19:27
bottle, go in the water, they find that, hey, you've used some
01:19:32
of the oxygen, but then you have a pure oxygen tank on your
01:19:36
river, that's going to replenish just what you what you've
01:19:39
consumed a minute ago. At the same time, it's going to use
01:19:43
some co2 filters to remove the co2 co2 which is toxic, which is
01:19:48
part of what you're exhaling. So in summary, it cleans up the gas
01:19:52
removes the toxic co2, and it pumps up whatever missing
01:19:57
whatever oxygen that you have consumed would be missing
01:19:59
otherwise Okay, so that's a closed circuit rebreather, the
01:20:03
way it works means that there's no bubbles at all coming out of
01:20:06
the river. And because your body really doesn't use much oxygen,
01:20:11
much less than we probably think that we in general public
01:20:13
probably think you can, you don't use much gas. So on my
01:20:18
closed circuit River, out, I've got two tanks on the unit, I've
01:20:22
got a pure oxygen three litre tank and a regular air three
01:20:26
litre tank, the air tank is essentially just for my my wind,
01:20:31
my BCD, my drysuits. And for adjustments of what I breathe,
01:20:36
as I change that, that's it's the pure oxygen is what really I
01:20:40
breathe for being able to survive in the water. And we've
01:20:44
treated the tank, I'm able to spend six or seven hours in the
01:20:47
water. If I'm really relaxed, in one hour of diving, whatever the
01:20:53
depth, and we're going to consume about 20 bars of oxygen
01:20:57
on the three litre tank. So that's the best efficiency you
01:21:01
can get off any sort of diving apparatus and the water put up.
01:21:06
Now it's a bit technical to use, because you need to get the gas
01:21:10
exchangers the number the number of oxygen molecules perfectly
01:21:13
right. As we know, if you've got too much oxygen and you run into
01:21:16
other problems too little you get into hypoxia other problems
01:21:20
again. So it makes closed circuit rivers, the technical
01:21:24
ones a bit complicated to use. And some people consider them
01:21:29
dangerous. For that reason, they do require more training and
01:21:32
more vigilance, now comes the semi closed rivers, they work in
01:21:37
a very, very different when sort of different principle, you
01:21:41
still use some co2 cartridge filters. To clean the co2 out of
01:21:46
your exaile gas, you still need that you don't want to start
01:21:49
getting your headaches by breathing your co2 again again.
01:21:52
So that's the same. However, you don't have to tanks, you don't
01:21:57
need pure oxygen tank. Those pure oxygen tanks which are
01:22:00
tricky to source depending on where you dive and all that. You
01:22:03
just need a nitrox tank, one nitrous tank, you preempt the
01:22:06
network's tank onto your rebreather, with what the semi
01:22:10
close reprieve does is it will always flow some of that nitrox
01:22:16
into your breathing loop your breathing backs. Okay, so let's
01:22:20
say you have nitrox Vegito in the tank. As you breathe, you're
01:22:24
going to take it down to something else, let's say nitrox
01:22:28
27. And if you keep breathing, you're going to take it down
01:22:31
further, maybe nitrox, 2321, and so on. So to compensate for that
01:22:36
your rebreather is going to keep injecting bubbles of the netwrix
01:22:40
32 from the tank. So in a way of a semi closed River, your
01:22:46
breathing keeps pulling down the percentage of oxygen. But your
01:22:51
river keeps on pushing nitrox on the tank to push it up, push it
01:22:55
back up. So that sort of compensate each other. But
01:22:58
generally speaking, you've got let's say if you're breathing,
01:23:00
if your tank is 32, natural 32%, you might be breathing only
01:23:05
2726 28, something like that, as a result of this process where
01:23:11
the semi closed river always pushed some gas. It pushes more
01:23:15
than what you need. So at some point, that rebreather is full
01:23:19
of gas, it's actually always full of gas. So you've got a few
01:23:22
bubbles coming out from the back of the river. So that's the
01:23:26
difference with a closed circuit rebreather, you do have some
01:23:28
bubbles coming back. But there's very few and in that sense, you
01:23:31
still have the advantage of getting closer to wildlife. And
01:23:35
it's much safer because you don't depending on the
01:23:38
rebreather design, of course, yet the risk of going to hypoxia
01:23:42
hypercapnia or hyperoxia is nonexistence.
01:23:47
Matt Waters: And what's your bottom times like on the semi
01:23:49
close then in comparison to the full CCR?
01:23:52
Nicholas Remy: So that depends very depends more on depth, and
01:23:56
on and on the size of the tank. So my longest dive on the CCR
01:24:02
was four hours 30 minutes, and I still have plenty of gas and my
01:24:06
tanks. So it was more a case of I had it was dinnertime I had to
01:24:10
go to go out here. That was the reason. Lovely Dave Heather was
01:24:14
with the sea dragons in Adelaide by the way, nice, lovely place
01:24:18
lovely dive anyways, with the semi closed with the horizon and
01:24:24
diving now. It basically depends how much how close you want the,
01:24:32
the guests that you're breathing to be to what you have in the
01:24:35
tank. So if you have nitrox 32 in the tank, and you say hey, I
01:24:40
really want to breathe at least 28 It's going to use lots of
01:24:44
bubbles to keep you that up. If you say that's fine, I'm going
01:24:47
pretty shallow. I'm happy with nitrox. 25 then there's going to
01:24:51
be very few bubbles going there to give you that 25 So long
01:24:55
story short if I'm sure diving in Sydney, which is between five
01:25:00
to 20 metres depth most of the time out of a seven litre steel
01:25:05
tank. I can do three hours in your house on the river. Nice.
01:25:11
It's pretty good.
01:25:12
Matt Waters: Yeah. And retail wise. What's the difference in
01:25:17
price between the two units?
01:25:19
Nicholas Remy: It's run Yeah, roughly okay. So for the
01:25:23
marathon instant I know best. The Revo I think brand new might
01:25:28
cost you up to 15 grands. Now, if you take all the options,
01:25:31
there are options there, but the one that you dive would be new
01:25:34
15 runs the horizon. I think this is seven to eight grand,
01:25:40
something like that. Okay, so it's meant to be much more
01:25:42
affordable. Yeah, an interesting thing as well is because Marius
01:25:46
is really going full on with this river. They're really this
01:25:49
is something they believe in and they're making all efforts to
01:25:53
try and make it something that you know, spreads and gets lots
01:25:57
of support. There's quite a few dev shops now within Australia
01:26:00
that have signed up for for being part of the horizon
01:26:03
dealership basically. And as a result, if I was flying to
01:26:08
Brisbane to go diving on Straddie which is a fantastic
01:26:11
place by the wait for Manta rays don't have to go to Maldives.
01:26:14
There they are in there in Brisbane, basically, there's a
01:26:17
dead centre there, they do reverse they do arise and and I
01:26:20
can rent a river from there from them. I can rent horizon, the
01:26:24
left to travel with mine.
01:26:25
Matt Waters: Right? Perfect. Yeah, that makes sense. When's
01:26:30
your next trip? Check star triple away?
01:26:32
Nicholas Remy: Um, I haven't planned it actually. I mean, 8x
01:26:36
is just going to be the show and meeting people. The thing is,
01:26:39
I'm very, very fortunate to say that I'm going to become an
01:26:42
Australian citizen soon.
01:26:43
Matt Waters: Hey, congratulations. Thank
01:26:45
Nicholas Remy: you. I'm so happy. I'm so excited. And the
01:26:48
kids as well. But the thing is, we don't know yet when he's
01:26:51
going to be the ceremony, the citizenship or you pledge
01:26:53
allegiance, your loyalty to Australia and all that. Yeah.
01:26:56
And I think once I have the ceremony, that will be a few
01:26:59
weeks for me to wait to get the passport. Yeah, until I have the
01:27:02
passport. I cannot go out of Australia because otherwise I
01:27:04
cannot come back.
01:27:06
Matt Waters: Really? Yeah. But your piano though you're on
01:27:09
permanent residency. Now.
01:27:10
Nicholas Remy: I am. But from the time I become a citizen,
01:27:14
even if I don't have a passport yet, I cannot have a PR visa
01:27:16
anymore, because I'm a citizen. So I cannot go back into the
01:27:19
country harsh.
01:27:21
Matt Waters: Because I'm a little way behind you. Were just
01:27:25
a PR, but probably 18 months, maybe a bit more behind you.
01:27:30
It's gonna be a couple of years before I get my citizenship and
01:27:32
blue passport. But I didn't know that. But
01:27:35
Nicholas Remy: yeah, I think about the day there will be a
01:27:37
few months where you can't really go out of the country. I
01:27:40
mean, you will visit when they booked my trip to edX. I was I
01:27:44
was taking the risk because normally they give you an email
01:27:47
one month before the actual ceremony. And I booked IDEXX
01:27:50
five weeks before it was like, gee, if in the next seven days,
01:27:54
they tell me that's your ceremony, whatever you do, but
01:27:57
they haven't saw should be fine. But yeah, long story short, I'm
01:27:59
not going to book any overseas trip in the next few weeks.
01:28:03
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Huh? Hey,
01:28:09
let's get these questions out. Yeah, it was me.
01:28:17
I've got to put my glasses on. That's one of the big things. I
01:28:20
mean, you mentioned that earlier on, you've got to have like both
01:28:23
I've got a bifocal lens in your mask. To wear glasses.
01:28:28
Nicholas Remy: No, no. Linna used to need analysis, but she
01:28:31
and she and she had it at some point.
01:28:33
Matt Waters: Did she get laser surgery and shit like that?
01:28:36
Yeah. See, I'm I'm I can't remember which way around it is
01:28:40
long side short sighted, whatever it is. I need reading
01:28:43
glasses. Like these things. So I've been told by the optician
01:28:48
that it's not operable. Right. So it's kind of tough shit Matt,
01:28:53
you're going to you're going to grin and bear it. So I ended up
01:28:57
getting I got a prescription lens from AWS Bob, big shout out
01:29:02
to him. He's just up in mono Val optician there and got the
01:29:09
bifocal lenses in and it's it's good. But your eyes continue to
01:29:16
deteriorate further for the first two to five years. Right
01:29:20
so now it's I've had the lenses for a year. I think I might have
01:29:24
to get some more so it's another another sting in the pocket. And
01:29:29
it's torture as well because I used to be really good with the
01:29:31
eyes. So take a macro Yep, was a piece of piss. Yeah, now I've
01:29:36
not only got to manhandle the camera but kind of move the head
01:29:39
to get focused
01:29:40
Nicholas Remy: on the lenses on the when you're watching
01:29:43
something close, right? Yeah, yeah,
01:29:45
Matt Waters: that's why wide angle I'm taking my wide angle
01:29:47
shots at the moment because they're easier to do for me,
01:29:49
Nicholas Remy: but you know what, what you what you might be
01:29:50
able to do with your with your camera. What's your housing
01:29:53
brand? Ikelite Yep. What you might be able to do is get from
01:29:57
a callate a an angled viewfinder. Yeah, that has
01:30:01
optical correction built in. Yeah. And if that's not the
01:30:04
case, I think that you can do one that you might be able to
01:30:06
fit there.