Transcript
Jennifer Berglund 00:04
Welcome to HMSC Connects!, where we go behind the scenes of four Harvard museums to explore the connections between us, our big, beautiful world, and even what lies beyond. My name is Jennifer Berglund, part of the exhibits team here at the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, and I’ll be your host. Today, I’m speaking with Keith Ellenbogen, an underwater wildlife photographer, Associate Professor of Photography at SUNY, the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and a Visiting Artist at the MIT Sea Grant. He uses photography to raise environmental awareness about underwater marine life, including sharks, the focus of our upcoming exhibit, “Swimming with Sharks: A Deep Dive into Shark Biology and Behavior,” which is opening on November 10. I wanted to know more about the ways in which a photographer sees the underwater world, and of course, what it’s like to actually swim with sharks. Keith Ellenbogen, welcome to the show.
Keith Ellenbogen 01:25
Jennifer, thanks for having me here. I’m looking forward to it.
Jennifer Berglund 01:33
You began your life underwater and your journey as a photographer at the same time, so how did that happen, and when did you realize both would be lifelong endeavors?
Keith Ellenbogen 01:43
It’s very interesting. I started volunteering at the New England Aquarium when I was 16 years old, and I always was fascinated with fish and the underwater life. I’m not really sure why but I just always was curious about it. That same year when I was 16, my grandfather, who was an amateur photographer gave me my first underwater camera, Nikonos V film camera, and I started diving and taking pictures off the coast of New England, off of actually Gloucester and Rockport, Massachusetts, and down in the Cape, and I just did it because I loved it. And I was learning about the role the oceans play, about the animals, about finding the animals, learning about diving, and at the same time learning about taking pictures, and the three things sort of just happened simultaneously. And at that point, I was learning and making lots of mistakes and failures and having some success, and really just enjoying the process of exploring the underwater world and taking pictures, not knowing at that time, what I know now, which is that it would lead me into my career as an underwater photographer.
Jennifer Berglund 02:38
You mentioned that your grandfather’s a nature photographer.
Keith Ellenbogen 02:40
He photographed portraits, and he photographed scenes of flowers, still life of flowers, and I remember as a kid going in the dark room with him, and what he would do is find these like orchids and lilies, and he would photograph them using a macro lens. And then in the dark, when we would dodge and burn out the background so it would just be the flower against this black background. They’re really absolutely beautiful images, I love them very much, and I remember so much as a child the process of being in the darkroom with a little bit of the red light and just looking at the image and moving your hand over the light and the magic of the film, and how an image appears, and how you really create, and edit the image that you want even after taking it. And those were just informative days that started, it was always a joy to go to their house and to work in the basement and to see what we could develop and make in those days.
Jennifer Berglund 03:30
Did he ever describe to you what he was trying to capture in those images?
Keith Ellenbogen 03:35
You know, I’m not sure he did it in terms of storytelling in that way. I think he had a real love of the art of photography, and how to capture an image that just innately he felt resonated with people, and mostly himself, which is why photography is so wonderful, you know, you can bring your own joy in your own craft into something. And I think what I learned from him was that he would spend time setting up the images, lighting it, finding the right light, taking the picture, and then hours in the dark room developing the picture and tweaking it. And I think when you put in that level of work into an image, it helps your craft; if you don’t like something, you can always redo it. But what is it that you want to do better? And I think he looked at the images in terms of how can he communicate the beauty of a flower in black and white, and in color, and to develop that his own way. And you know, we would spend time looking at the petals and looking at the colors and the outline of the flower stem, and I remember his working on that and sort of just adjusting it just the right way in his basement and having those conversations, and he wasn’t doing anything with the pictures other than showing them off in his house and when friends and family came over to be like this is the images he liked. And I think that there was a real pride in learning the craft of photography, and spending time work on it and that translated into my own life, maybe not at such an early age, but that was a foundation for how I grew forward as an artist, as a person, and as someone who cares about the environment. But, you know, the subjects he was working with were still. He was working with still lifes, essentially, and suddenly you’re underwater capturing photos of these moving living beings that are somewhat unpredictable, and so it sort of creates this whole other complicated dimension of learning how to predict behavior, as you were saying, and currents and positioning and lighting changes due to the waves overhead and due to the visibility, which is so variable in New England. Time is a great factor. I mean, it’s so amazing. I mean, the studio, you could sit up, you could stay there all day long, set the lights up, even if you’re in a natural light, you can wait for the light, you could just sort of sit there all day long. Underwater, I don’t have that kind of luxury. I have an hour, again, plus or minus with the tank, but then you can go back but after that time, things change and move on. And so time is a really, also just an interesting concept for how to photograph something and to sort of get yourself into an area to photograph it within that limited amount of time. Both are beautiful art forms, but I do always — I like the the added challenge that I recognize that we have limited amount of time underwater, which has always been a shame and something I wish I could stay under longer.
Jennifer Berglund 06:19
Yeah, I know the feeling. I’m a diver, as well, and have spent a lot of time diving in New England, and there are so many added challenges. It’s not, yet as you were saying, it’s not like diving in the Caribbean or in the Philippines or something like that, where you have 100 feet of visibility in front of you. It’s, no, I mean, sometimes it’s like a foot of visibility. You have told me in the past that you think diving in New England and the challenging environment that New England has essentially made you a better diver. Tell me about that a little bit.
Keith Ellenbogen 06:53
You’re always biased a little bit to where you grew up, but I do think that the challenging conditions here limited visibility, cold water, and when I say cold water, it’s not ice cold. But, you know, down on the bottom, it’s 45, 50, 55 sometimes, and the visibility down to 100 feet sometimes is just seeing your hand in front of your face. And you have to use a rope to tie up, and the boats here, they expect you to come back to the boat, and if you don’t come back to the boat, you learned very quickly that next time you should have come back to the boat, because you wreck the experience for everyone else. And so one of the things that is important is learning one under slightly harder conditions, how to dive, how to be in control, how to navigate, how to look at the ocean, the light, the way the waves are moving, how to sense that there’s change in current, to change in position, how to follow a compass, how to sort of judge time underwater. And so those, I think, initial skills of getting good at diving, learning how to find things, and how to navigate underwater when you can’t really see that far. I mean, even in best case scenario, you only have 20 or 30 feet of visibility, which isn’t very far. And so that foundation, I think, also made me a good diver. And the limited visibility actually helped me because it helped me learn to look for things in sort of close areas, you don’t always have to swim so far to find everything, you find it where you happen to be. Sometimes you have to swim fast, but most of the time you are there. And so I think that was a really helpful experience because becoming good at diving, having good air consumption, feeling very comfortable under there helped relax me as a photographer to take my moment to pause, and so much of photography requires breathing and holding the camera stable, positioning the lights, maintaining body language, and so that sort of physical side coming together in a very relaxed way and feeling confident in my own abilities as a scuba diver to be able to handle different conditions also was a foundation for traveling around the world, in which, you know, there are also very difficult scenarios which currents can be strong. But in Bluewater, it’s really luxurious; you can see so far away, and it’s really heavenly. And so that’s a big change, and so I do feel that growing up in Boston, learning how to walk off the shores, and diving and carrying all the gear, and moving it back and forth gave me a real appreciation for scuba diving and a love for just the feeling of being underwater, which I personally do really like them. And the other thing that’s so nice is that when you’re underwater, you’re in three dimensional plane, which is so wonderful. I mean, on the surface, we’re just walking, and all we can do is stand with our eye point of view the way we are, but underwater, you’re swimming. You can move up down, left, right, and invert in all these different directions, and so you, all of a sudden, have a much larger swath of a space that you can see the world through.
Jennifer Berglund 09:39
Tell me a little bit more about how you continue to develop your skills as a photographer.
Keith Ellenbogen 09:46
I think one thing people don’t ever believe is that I practice a lot, and by practice a lot is that I do the same motions over and over again. I’m in physically good shape, but like I practice sort of how do you hold the camera steady when you’re really close to something so that you can photograph it at a close, macro kind of way. And so how do you get that timing to be right? If you don’t do something for a while, then the timing becomes slow. So if I’m not doing it for a while, I actually practice on different things.
Jennifer Berglund 10:12
How do you practice?
Keith Ellenbogen 10:13
I might look at a leaf and look at something and say, how does it sway and move, and try and tie my focus to something that’s moving. I might try to just sort of get muscle memory of like how to lift a camera quickly, and move it and be ready at the right moment. And you might say to yourself, well, that’s sounds so simple. But you know, if we take football as a quick analogy, I mean, people practice throwing the football all the time, and they already know how to do it. Well, the same is true in terms of how do you do photography — lifting up the camera, holding it, making sure it’s steady, or positioning the lights in the right way, having that reflex, so the camera can just be there so when the moment happens, you’re ready. Those are reflexes that need to happen and develop over time. Otherwise, you’re fumbling to get everything ready at the moment, and then at that moment, it’s too late. The action has already happened.
Jennifer Berglund 11:02
What was your road from a 16 year old diver photographer to a professional underwater photographer?
Keith Ellenbogen 11:10
I went to undergraduate college at Arizona State, and when I went there, which would seem like the unlikely place, I enrolled in a program to learn how to become a scuba diving instructor and I spent four years sort of on that path, and at the time, I thought I would make some money and I teach all my friends how to scuba dive and do this. But then in the end, I wasn’t really particularly good at that part, and basically just taught everyone how to scuba dive. And we would go down to Mexico and go into the blue water and learn how to dive there. But that also helped me learn how to read how people are underwater, comfort levels and other areas. And again, throughout that time, I was just diving and taking pictures because I loved it. And as part of that, I spent a year in Australia and went to the University of Queensland, and then had the fortunate ability to take a course on Heron Island, which was a world famous institute. It is a world famous research station, and I spent about two weeks out there, as a course learning about the marine life. Again, I was a photographer and an artist, not a marine scientist, but I enrolled in the class to get myself out there, and it was a wonderful experience. I saw for the first time Spanish dancer, a large Nudibranch, and I remember taking those pictures. And if I look back on them today, it’s a little embarrassing to look at those pictures, and I’d have to hunt and peck for them, and they’re all on slide and film and stuff. And the joy of being in those locations and seeing that was really wonderful, and the contrast was very different. In Australia, you know, the reef is enormous. I mean, every nook and cranny looking is another extraordinary animal and something surprising and something amazing. But again, I think learning in Boston, you learned how to look in those areas, and you would find all of this stuff. and so again, I was diving there and taking pictures and really enjoying that process. And from there, life sort of moved forward a little bit, and then I decided to get a Master’s in Fine Arts at Parsons School for Design in New York. And it really wasn’t until my senior thesis year that I decided to sort of focus, as most graduate students do, focus on a project of something that they love in their own work. And I decided to focus on underwater photography, and videography, and environmental storytelling, and to think of how do you sort of use that to communicate the underwater world. And that really was a sort of a more artistic foundational approach to my underwater photography, which I think was good at the time, but significantly getting better. And then when I graduated, I applied for a US Fulbright fellowship, and I got a fellowship to Malaysia to spend a year focusing on underwater photography about Malaysia’s coral reefs, which most people aren’t really aware of. They have spectacular coral reefs that rival really what the Great Barrier Reef is in Australia, but again, a lesser known place. And so I spent a year there, and that was a year and I’ve mentioned this to the Fulbright office was transformative year that I would say was one of the gifts of life to be able to have where I, for the first time, solely could focus on underwater photography, and was doing it everyday. Never before was I out every day going diving, but here I had a year and I could just spend it doing it as much as possible, and my photography quickly improved. And I would say dramatically, just from the art of doing it every day and seeing these animals, and so I would get better and better at it, I think. Learning how to position the strobes, how to do this, and because I was in the same location over time I could constantly improve myself where if image didn’t come out as good as I wanted, I could now spend the time getting better at it. And that was really the first time I could apply my skills in as a Master’s for art and just my skills in terms of spending 10 years becoming an underwater photographer into something that was shaping me into the art of becoming a professional photographer, and I think that year was really a very transformative experience. It also was blue water, there were many other animals to see, and so I view that is really just a wonderful experience that changed the direction of my life completely.
Jennifer Berglund 14:57
And you also spent time in the Mediterranean photographing animals there. Tell me about that.
Keith Ellenbogen 15:03
So after Fulbright, I had the fortunate Oceania, I got hired to photograph the Atlantic bluefin tuna on their annual migration to reproduce. And so we spent about two to three months on the boat in the Mediterranean. Started off in Spain and went all along the coast, and it was incredible to see because what I was able to photograph was an Atlantic bluefin tuna, but not only the tuna, to document the fishing practices that was here. All of these tuna come through the Mediterranean Sea, and in one full day of the quota being open, they caught all the tuna, and it was remarkable. The fishing techniques are extremely precise, and I was just documenting this to show what was happening. I didn’t have a stand whether this is good or bad, but just that people were maintaining the quota and to document these images of the whole process. And it’s like an orchestra, which is incredibly complex. They’re like many boats there. The challenge is how do you show this in a way that is sensitive to all sides of something and to communicate, really, the tuna’s point of view, which is they are an important fish, not just for their beauty, but for economic purposes, and to give people a sort of a connection to them, so that they would feel empowered to protect these animals so that they’re not over fished, and that the last one isn’t caught. And one of the proudest moments of my photographic career was I captured what I think is a beautiful image of an Atlantic bluefin tuna, and that fish was used as part of the fish to symbolize protecting it when it was up for unfortunately, because it’s an endangered species and was under protection was used to sort of galvanize protection for it to change its status. Due to geopolitical kind of things, it really never changed the status of it. But needless to say, I think that the photograph was used to help communicate and to empower people to feel a connection to this animal. And I think that that, photographically, has always been what I’ve been after, which is how do you connect to an animal, and how do you feel a relationship to it that makes you want to care about it. And tuna are incredibly difficult to photograph because they’re silver, they’re fast, and they don’t come by very quickly. And so, you know, your light hits it, and then all of a sudden, it’s like photographing a mirror. It’s not a particularly great picture, and so working that through to get a good image of one was a challenge. And in those days, the cameras weren’t quite as sensitive with the lights and the whites. You had to really get your light just right. But I think that that level of artistry in terms of creating a connection to the underwater world has been something that I strive for, as our as a photographer.
Jennifer Berglund 17:28
What’s it like to swim with an animal like that? I mean, bluefin tuna are massive. What’s it like to swim with not just one, but a school of giant, bullet fast, animals like that? It just, it must be exhilarating.
Keith Ellenbogen 17:42
It’s incredible to see animals so big, and to see schools so large, and you can feel their presence around you underwater. And it’s humbling also, because you realize, well, I realize, you know, as physical as I think I am, and as good of a swimmer as I think I can be, I have no abilities relative to these tuna that can just, you know, they hit these burst speeds, you can feel them moving, they’re all over the place. And so it’s really an incredible experience. I feel it is a gift of life to have been next to some of them and to be able to photograph them. And so it’s awe inspiring to see the power of nature, and the diversity of the underwater world, underwater tuna, the mackerel to all sorts of other creatures, to sharks. It’s amazing under there.
Jennifer Berglund 18:27
Speaking of sharks, your spectacular images of sharks will grace the walls of our upcoming exhibition, “Swimming with Sharks: A Deep Dive into Shark Biology and Behavior,” which opens at the Harvard Museum of Natural History on November 10 of this year. Though we’re featuring many of your images, the one that’s kind of our feature image for the exhibition is of a school of bull sharks imaged from below. That must have been a pretty incredible experience. So, tell me about it. Tell me the story behind that image.
Keith Ellenbogen 19:01
Swimming with sharks is an incredible experience because sharks are very aware of the underwater environment, and when you swim past a fish or when you walk past maybe a pigeon or something like that, it recognizes you in a way that just sort of feels like we see each other. But a shark, it’s unmistakable. They have an eye contact, a way to look at you. They do appear when you have eye contact to understand who you are, what you are, your, certainly, abilities. When you go to a playground and you see little kids running around, you instantly are aware of like what their level is. And I imagine the shark has sort of a similar kind of ability where it sees you and says, “Oh, you must be kind of slow and clunky and under there,” and so they are just magnificent animals to watch. And the second thing they do is it’s hard to understand this but they are intrinsically so graceful. It’s like mesmerizing to watch them and I can see when you even when you see a picture of them they’re just — they capture everyone’s attention. You just stop at them. They’re just incredible. But when they watch them really swimming and moving in your photograph, I tried to freeze that moment in time where they really still all have that balletic movement. But in the in between just of watching and picking that moment, they really are graceful to watch. And here in Fiji, there was a whole school of bull sharks, and they’re giant animals. They must be like 8-10 feet, big, thick, and they’re not like they look very muscular. And when they swim sort of in the circling way above, you know, it’s very peaceful, and life is very slow. There’s no mistaking they’re a giant shark, and that they are well aware and in control of what is happening in the environment, but are really beautiful. And when you look at this particular image, you do see the white underbellies of them, and it really helps you sort of appreciate that they’re counter shading that when you look up at them, they sort of do blend in a little bit with the surface and when you look down at them, they also blend down with the deep sea. And even though you clearly can see all the silhouettes of these images, and again, through the art of photography, and making sure that the silhouettes appear with your regular eye, or with your eye, which your pupil would adjust so you see them, there’s no problem seeing them, but there is a blending in kind of component that naturally would happen. And the key to the photograph is to make it so that the image pops just the way you want. The contrast is a little bit more or the light is a little bit less so that you can shoot through that blue water and freeze that moment where they’re sort of circling above.
Jennifer Berglund 21:26
Yeah, you can see in the image the white belly of one of the sharks, which I’m guessing you used a strobe or a flash to illuminate that. But then above, there’s sort of some three dimensionality to it, right where you can see the silhouettes of other sharks above and the blue sky or the blue water above you. You can see the shark very clearly just illuminated by your strobes, but then behind, you can see what you’re talking about, how the sharks kind of blend in gradually with their environment. Was that intentional?
Keith Ellenbogen 21:59
Exactly, absolutely. And that layered approach is what makes a photograph so fun is that you get the light to the dark transition. You shoot through something that’s unfamiliar — the underwater in through the surface to the air. And so you want to definitely make sure that the strobes give some impression so that you can see them in the detail of it. Not so much that you blow them out your subject, but that you illuminate it in a way that is very natural and true to the animal as well as this the silhouetting. And so that layered approach is is the fun of photography, and obviously swimming with the sharks is a magnificent experience as well, and one I’ll never forget.
Jennifer Berglund 22:33
One of the other components of our exhibit is this video you took of a gigantic, great white shark off the coast of New England. And that was quite the unexpected experience for you. Can you tell me that story?
Keith Ellenbogen 22:47
I’m working on a project that’s in New England that focuses on raising environmental awareness through the art of photography of New England’s marine life. Projects entitled “Space to See: A Photographic Journey into Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary,” and what I’m trying to showcase is that New England has extraordinary marine life. We just don’t think of it in that way because there are other places that people dive more often than not, and so our vocabulary isn’t like, oh, go to New England to go see a whole bunch of marine life. But the one thing about wildlife photography is you never exactly know what you’re gonna experience each time you’re in the water. There’s always a little bit of like, what could be there. And the thing is is that you have to be ready for those moments at any given time, because there’s wildlife here that we are jumping into their habitat, not the other way around. And so I feel fortunate that I’ve photographed many sharks from smaller sharks, such as black tip and reef sharks, all the way up to larger animals, these bull sharks and whatnot. And so, on this one day, we were out in New England, and we saw a fin along the surface. Now, I was anticipating photographing a basking shark, and for those of you that don’t know what a basking shark is, a basking shark is the world’s second largest shark and it usually has its mouth wide open in his filter feeding on plankton. It’s a peaceful shark, and they do a behavior where they swim along the surface and they just wouldn’t like that for extended periods of time. And when I decided to do was to jump in the water and swim to the shark, and I was free diving so I’m wearing a mask, fins, a thick wetsuit, and a 360 degree Virtual Reality multi camera system so that I could photograph in all ways. And the shark did a behavior. We watched it for about a half an hour, and it made like a giant circle, a behavior that’s known to basking sharks where there may be a bunch of them schooling, so I was prepared to swim to the shark, free dive down, and see a whole bunch of them and have this thing circling around. And so when I started swimming in the water, I was pretty far away and I was snorkeling over to it and I was mentally preparing the shot that I want. I was controlling my breathing so that I would be able to get to it. Now in New England, you only have 20 feet of visibility, if you’re lucky. Sometimes it’s only five feet. And so as I’m approaching, when I’m at the 20 foot mark, and I’m ready to free dive down, I realize that I’m no longer seeing this beautiful basking shark, but rather a 17 foot, 3000 pound great white shark. For those of you that don’t know what it’s like to encounter a shark that large, time froze at that very moment. I did the only thing that I’ve really been trained for. You don’t start on great white sharks, but hold the camera steady, get the shot that you want, and keep your heartbeat nice and low, which may sound like easy things but when you see these animals, they are very large. And I swam, and for eleven glorious seconds, this shark is swimming right past me. I was so close, I could have scratched its tooth. In fact, I was so close to it that I thought I was gonna hip check the shark, but what you realize is that they’re not just mindless killers. Rather, they are apex predators that are to be appreciated and let time go on. And so it just swim past me. And to give you a little bit more of a sense of the scale of the shark, the shark was so large, it was bigger than the skiff that I was on. I was on a little rib that was 16 feet. The shark was 17 feet. The ocean that normally looks so vast and big, was all you could see was this great white shark.There was no other part of the ocean to look at. And when I swim by and our eyes locked, it was an unmistakable moment where just two animals looked at each other and had some reaction. Now, you know, I’m sure I’m the first living creature to swim up to a great white shark. I don’t imagine this is a common thing, even for the fish world. But, needless to say, I did do that. I would never do this again. I think swimming with the sharks is incredibly dangerous, but didn’t New England, it’s particularly dangerous because you can’t see beyond 20 feet so you have no idea where these animals are or what they’re doing. Again, it was an amazing photographic moment, and I encourage all of you to see this imagery. It’s going to be viewed on a large screen and also could be viewed using the way I shot it was to be viewed as a 360 degree, so an immersive visual experience so that would simulate what it’s like there. And actually, funnily enough, Jennifer, when you look, you can see my own reaction and so you can see my body language change the second I realized this was a shark.
Jennifer Berglund 27:02
Oh, really? What did you do?
Keith Ellenbogen 27:04
Instead of just swimming, you know, well, I was prepared to freedive my body tightened and sort of just made myself as sort of small and then let myself drift, but you can see how I held the cameras stable to get that shot. And so it was an amazing experience.
Jennifer Berglund 27:18
Kids don’t try this at home.
Keith Ellenbogen 27:20
Yeah, exactly.
Jennifer Berglund 27:21
I think the majority of people that dive with great white sharks dive in a cage. This is not something that really anyone should ever do, and it was not intentional on your part, but wow, what an incredible experience!
Keith Ellenbogen 27:35
I immediately after I got the footage, I reported to a friend, Greg Skomal, who had ID’d the shark. They ID’d four years ago. It was on a Discovery Channel show. It’s called Large March. No one had seen it for four years. After my encounter with it about a month later, it made its way through to Chatham, and they had ID’d it off the boat and got some other video footage, and they can confirm through the fins that have unique markings. So it was really amazing that, you know, these animals are moving around, and I don’t think people still know. I mean, there’s so much we don’t know about sharks, about the marine life underwater. Where do they swim? What are they exactly eating? Would it go for all those years? Was it just not seen? Or did it go somewhere else? And these are the questions that many scientists are working on addressing. And the other thing is, is that from a photographic point of view, is that how do we show what’s in our local waters, not just in other parts of the world and bring those animals back to us. And so these images help really connect people to say that the sharks, apex predators, great white sharks are here locally in our waters, and I know there’s environmental concerns on both sides of the equation, but they are here and they are a symbol of a healthy ocean ecosystem and really to be admired and not scared of.
Jennifer Berglund 28:46
It’s an interesting story about the great whites in New England, too. They’ve always been there. They’ve always been around the New England area in the summertime. They of course have these very large migration routes. Some go all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, even in the wintertime, but they swim up by the Cape and around the Gulf of Maine and by Nova Scotia. I think there’s some evidence that there’s a breeding ground off the coast of New England, and in recent years, there’s been this resurgence of their populations, which is both wonderful and scary to a lot of people. So we’re kind of trying to figure out ways to live with them where we are living with them safely, both both for them and for us. Do you know anything about why we have had this resurgence in population?
Keith Ellenbogen 29:34
The seal population off the coast of New England has diminished over the years previously, and there was a Marine Mammal Protection Act that was instated and populations of seals have really been restored. And so, with their populations increasing so have the sharks. Simultaneously, there’s been a lot of research on them here, and so we’re learning a lot for where they are and where they move. They may have always been here in numbers, or perhaps their populations are really increasing with the increased numbers of seals around. And the controversy is, how do you, as people manage going in on the shore and going for a swim and not feeling scared that a shark is going to come and attack us, and I think we are swimming in their ocean, and visitors really. I think the likelihood is very small, but people put themselves in situations sometimes where they surf where there’s turbid waters, and next to the seals, and there’s always the risk of danger, and so it’s an interesting environmental challenge that is really for scientists, policymakers, and the general public to work through. But they are here, and they are an icon of Chatham and Massachusetts and Nantucket, and you know, I think amazing animals, and like many other animals, they’ve confronted are at the intersection of human development and human life. And it is our challenges is a group of people and concerned citizens to how to protect and manage and find an ocean that is true to what the ocean really is. I leave that to the other people, policymakers to and scientists to decide, but I do feel that the photography can help inform the public and help engage them. And I hope that this image of Large Marge or of a great white shark taken locally, helps to sort of mitigate some people’s fears that they’re just mindless maneaters just snapping at everything. I was within inches of this shark, and it didn’t do a thing to attack me or to bother me. That’s not to say that the next time would be the same, and I would not do this again, but it does mean that they’re just not randomly biting, killing machines.
Jennifer Berglund 31:36
You also have a really powerful image of another shark that lives off the coast of New England of a blue shark. They’re these just gorgeous, sort of very streamlined, oceanic animals, meaning they live in the open ocean. They have this sort of tint of blue on their dorsal side on their backs, and they just looks like they glide through the water. And you have a few amazing images of them but one is of the face of a blue shark, and it has a hook going all the way through its jaw. This illustrates another problem we’re dealing with where there is sort of that conflict between humans and nature, and for which there are no easy solutions, right? Tell me a little bit about that image.
Keith Ellenbogen 32:24
I think the blue shark is one of the prettiest of all the sharks. It does, as Jenny described, have this like electric blue top to it, and they have a very beautiful swim stroke. It’s, I don’t know how you describe what a beautiful swim stroke is in word, but as they swim, they just are effortlessly balletic under. They’re so graceful, it’s really just a joy to watch them, and so they’re open ocean sharks, and they know no boundaries, and just are out usually in deepwater. They don’t come into shore. And so, I’ve been fortunate to photograph them and they will come close, and I’m able to get close to these sharks, and some of them have hooks in their mouths, and, you know, it’s unfortunate to see that these are another human impact where we as a society have to decide, you know, what we want. People do fish for sharks, and it’s all legal behavior, and all legal kinds of things, and so what they do is they catch a shark, it gets hooked, and, you know, obviously, they have sharp teeth and stuff so they cut the hook, the line that’s close, and then the hook rusts out of its mouth. These images that I have of it are meant to really evoke that sense of controversy and discussion. And, you know, for us to think about what are the right ways to do this. Are there better hooks that could be used that rust even faster? Is there technology that we can use that can help minimize the at least impact to these animals so that it’s a quicker recovery in the event? And you know, if that’s a cost, is that a cost we’re willing to pay to sort of help support these animals in the water? And so these images are meant to strike a balance with showing that there is a human impact that happens to these to the sharks underwater.
Jennifer Berglund 34:14
You compared photographing animal life underwater to street photography, and I love that description of it. So what do you mean by that? And how does that play into your photographic strategy during a dive?
Keith Ellenbogen 34:25
I think, you know, if you’re a street photographer, you’re looking at taking the ordinary every day sort of life that we go through, the path of where we go, and to find a photograph that is a moment, that is a little more special than others or to freeze a frame that causes us to pause, of something that we see every day, but we never saw it from that angle, that perspective. The light hit it a certain way. The movement just stopped. Someone jumped over a puddle that was just in the right spot. They’re wearing higher heels than they normally wear. Whatever the scenario might be, street photographers walk the street looking for things or wait patiently knowing that there’s going to be perhaps some moments there to photograph. I think I like to apply that to an underwater world in which we don’t always know what we’re going to see, and in some ways, it’s always ordinary until it’s extraordinary. And that is these spectacular moments. And sometimes it’s putting yourself in there, but not all light is the same. Not all animal movement is the same. And so, I think, like a street photographer waiting for something very special, I tried to apply that underwater and to wait for the shark to move in just the right angle where it shows its whole body and gives a body gesture where it’s really looking at the lens and sort of has this engaging moment. I try very hard to capture them in real terms that aren’t these dramatic, like, out to bite you and kill you moments, but rather, these beautiful animals that are here, integrating in with a watery aquatic movement, where you can see the color of the ocean, you can see the light trickle in, and you can see its tail and body and fins. And so, I think that street photography has this really fun parallel because it’s something we can relate to, but when we see a picture of a master street photograph, we stop and say, “Wow, I wish I saw that.” And I think that is the translation to the underwater world; although, I recognize most people aren’t able to get there or see it, so it’s their first impression of it. And for those that are able to see it, I hope that they recognize that this was a really special moment that only occurs once every lifetime. And so it’s how I view those photographs, as these quick moments that only happen, and as an artist, I work very hard to find those. And oftentimes I see them and don’t get the picture I want and then will patiently realize that, “oh, now that that behavior happens, maybe if I reposition myself or get the light better, or get the my interaction better, that will be happen again.” And I think street photographers do that. They have the luxury of knowing if you’re in New York City, that rush hour every day is at five o’clock. Maybe those same things will happen at five o’clock every day. Well, I can take that same approach and apply that to the underwater world. And so I think it’s just a it’s a nice way of looking at like animals move the same way underwater as I think people move through a city.
Jennifer Berglund 37:18
I love that because what you’re talking about is a rhythm, right? You know, there’s a rhythm to street photography where you can predict when rush hour is going to be. You know, so you have that parameter to work with. Then you know that you’re going to see more people at that time, so you position yourself in a way to capture spontaneity when it happens, because you know the location where the shot’s going to be so you can position yourself there. And then the underwater world, you know, there are rhythms, as well. I know for sharks, for instance, they tend to hunt in the evenings at dusk. And there’s a lot of activity on the coral reefs right in the early morning as the sun rises, and late at night when the sun sets. And so, by sort of knowing how you can position yourself on a reef or in a particular part of the ocean, at an upwelling or knowing that a particular individual animal a shark tends to come into an area at a certain time of day, or a fish has a certain little nook that it likes to hang out in, then you know, to position yourself there to be ready to capture that spontaneity. I just love that way of thinking about it.
Keith Ellenbogen 38:24
Exactly. And the fun thing is, is that you know the different areas all are different photographic kind of moments. Just like photographing a five o’clock rush hour versus a suburbia kind of thing. I know, the open ocean is very different to being on the sea floor, very different to being inshore. And so the cast of characters and kind of feeling of what you want is also dramatically different. And the thing that’s great about sharks is that, you know, they pick the hardest things to be in. They like the strongest current where, for them, it’s no problem, but for me, and you it’s, you know, exhausted. They like it at that dusk kind of hours where the low light. Well, that’s great to see but, you know, makes life difficult with the lighting and stuff like that. So, you know, the thing that’s so nice is that, yes, you can position yourself and each one of those has their own rhythm, vibe, and feeling. And so the open ocean in the Atlantic is very different to the open ocean in the Pacific. And even within those are different areas. And so I think you’re 100% right in that in saying, you know, the rhythm of these places, and the feel of them are very different from one to the other, and it’s fun to capture that feeling.
Jennifer Berglund 39:31
I just thought that love the idea of thinking of like sharks and fish as models, you know, like walking on the street or walking a catwalk, you know, and just having these moments.
Keith Ellenbogen 39:42
I mean, and they are. I mean, they’re prima donnas in many ways of the world. I mean, they’re in full control and they’re deciding everything. You just happen to be there to find that moment, but they’re doing all the directing and in reality you can only position.
Jennifer Berglund 40:01
How does photography influence the way you see the natural world?
Keith Ellenbogen 40:06
That’s a great question. And I think that what photography has done for me is pause me to learn to look. And I think, as I walk through the world and in nature and spend time. We always are going so quickly. But being familiar with a habitat location, and being able to pause and just appreciate little movements is really critical. And so, I’ve spent a lot of time just observing behavior, and watching it so that I can take the photograph, and I understand how to anticipate movement. I think it’s like studying film and playing sports. It’s like walking down a familiar street that you walk by every day, and you know how something is going to happen. And I think that level of learning to look and appreciate that there are details within what seems so common or so every day, allows me to really appreciate the sort of the beauty of nature, the coloration. There are many fish that are just described as silver, or when I look at the blue of the shark. It’s not just a uniform blue of a blue shark, it’s got a little bit of purple, it’s got an electric kind of blue silvery way that the light hits it and gradates. And I think that those subtle details of seeing that really capture my attention, and I like to bring that through in the photographs so that you can, whether formally or informally, just begin to appreciate those details. And so, to answer your question, it’s really the power of observation and studying how to animals move, how do you understand the behavior. And scientists do this to understand the behavior to understand the environmental impacts, and photographers like myself do this to understand how do you capture a moment and how do you photograph something. And sometimes we observe things in new ways because I’m under there, and seeing it in lots of ways. I see how animals swim, and see how they move around me, and it leads me to really appreciate their abilities underwater, and sort of the overall structure of what a dynamic ecosystem is.
Jennifer Berglund 42:02
Thinking about that question sort of on the flip side, too. What do you feel is the power of an audience viewing nature through the eye of the photographer versus through the lens of a scientist?
Keith Ellenbogen 42:16
Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I think as a photographer, I think there’s an intention and an element of how do you create a composition that has multiple layers where you see lots of things and have an appreciation for the animal, for the body language, the light, the sort of pizzazz maybe of an animal or its calmness. I think, from a scientific point of view, it may be to strictly just show the behavior in such a way as to communicate the very behavior or the science that is that is occurring. And in some instances, it may be strictly intention and others, it could be that there are stronger photos that are more connective, so when the public sees it, they connect to it and feel this moment of what is happening. Whereas in a scientific world, the intention might be just document what we have. It doesn’t need to really be artistic, or it doesn’t need to create a compelling emotional connection or tell the whole story. It just needs to communicate what we want right now. So there’s much time that there is overlap, but I think from artistic or from a storytelling or from a photographer’s perspective, it’s how do you encapsulate one picture that tells a large swath of a story? Or if there are multiple images? How do you sequence them in such a way that when someone walks by, the experience builds as we go through this and so in the exhibition of sharks, there will be a rhythm of how we move from one photograph to the next, from the scale of one to the other. And I think that is the approach that I take as a photographer, is how do you communicate what you want in those images, knowing that there may only be one image to do this or knowing that if there’s a series, how does each image add to the series of photographs and not be repetitious. I guess intention would be what I’d have to say is the main difference there.
Jennifer Berglund 44:11
Keith Allen Logan, thank you so much for being here. This has been fascinating.
Keith Ellenbogen 44:15
Thank you so much, Jenny. Great to be here and to talk to you.
Jennifer Berglund 44:21
Today’s HMSC connects podcast was edited by Eden Piacitelli and produced by me, Jennifer Berglund, and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Special thanks to Keith Ellenbogen for his wisdom and expertise, and thank you so much for listening. If you like today’s podcast, please subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts. See you in a couple of weeks.