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NINA BAXA
“Water.I’ve been fascinated with it from before I can remember. Apparently my father – in trying to impress my parents’ female friends with his knowledge of babies – gently submerged me as a new-born into our pool. I couldn’t get enough of it.
Scuba diving magnified this. Growing up 6 hour’s drive from the nearest ocean, and earning little in South Africa, I only started diving in 2008 with my husband, Len de Vries, as newly-weds. We had snorkelled with delight before, but diving really fuelled our dreams.
I studied and work as a medical imager: ultrasound, x-ray, CT scan, and so on. I guess you could say I’m keen on imaging, and keen on life and health. Combine that with a deep love for the underwater world, and you get a natural gravitation to the sea, and to imaging it….
A few months later, chance and a leap of faith took us to Grand Cayman on a work permit – and there our passion for the underwater world grew. We quickly bought a cheap point-and-shoot camera to show our friends and family back home the wonders of the Caribbean Sea. We pair well as a team, and so bundled our resources to buy better gear as our skills progressed.
I feel we’ve only just begun really getting into underwater imaging. We’re most certainly still learning, and will always do so. As a dynamic duo, we are complementary in a yin-yang way: at times one becomes so focused with the technical details that the feel of the moment becomes less – the other knows to come in, and adds the feel while knowing that the technical aspects are already there. It just flows, and we both get to witness the beauty around us, all the time.
With photographs, it all comes back to that one thing in the end: Water. It inspires me. If I can show the beauty of water, and the crucial importance of water, and all nature’s gifts in it, in any conceivable way, I’ll have a happy soul.
The journey continues.”
