I've had a love hate relationship with personal action cameras during my career thus far. I used to earn a living that allowed me to travel throughout the World and reside in some of the best SCUBA locations on the planet due to my work as an underwater videographer. I would look to establish relationships with leading recreational SCUBA Diving service providers and work alongside them as a way of expanding their services. In places like Palau, Yap, Tenerife and Bali I would film visiting SCUBA Divers and then sell them what was often seen as the most important souvenir of their time spent below the waves on that particular vacation. I earned, at times, a very good income especially when catering to divers traveling in groups. Alas all of this came crashing down with the advent of the personal action camera.

A family vacation where the GoProHero Camera with an inexpensive splash housing replaces the standard, and very expensive, underwater photographic system of old.

With people rocking up on dive vacations with GoProHero cameras stuck on to their tanks, masks and bodies there soon became less and less demand for my services. I guess in one aspect I was fortunate enough to leave that way of life just at the time when the personal action camera market started to take off. I was headed to pastures new in 2008 with my having been recruited by National Geographic. I was told after about a year by the individual who took over the imaging concession I'd been working in Palau that the market had pretty much imploded due to the increased number of divers bringing their own small cameras with them. He was feeling the pinch, big time.

A test shot with the GDome for my GoProHero7 Black.

On the other hand these small compact cameras in turn launched a third party industry in accessories. Manufacturers would busy themselves creating all manner of support accessories, some great, others pretty useless. The bane of any tourism hotspot the Selfie Stick soon became something that was banned by many locations due to their intrusive nature. But for the avid water people there were of course the housings and splash boxes that soon started flooding, no pun intended, the market.

On planning a family vacation last year to visit the Kerama Islands just to the west of Okinawa main island I'd opted to plum for a dome port system that would allow me to snag half water, half air, or split, shots. In my minds eye the shot of a Sea Turtle, of which the Kerama Islands are famous for, approaching the camera with a bending line of the sea water revealing blues skies and puffy white clouds above. Still waiting to get that one by the way!

So armed with my GDome Port and GoProHero 7 Black action camera I had now replaced an underwater photography rig with top of the range DSLR that ran into the many 000's of Dollars with something that cost $800 all in. So one can really start to see the appeal of these nifty little cameras with their own inexpensive splash housing options.

I guess the other thing is also that with a more expensive system there is the tendency to treat it with kid gloves, especially in a shallow water environment where there is a greater density of sand. Sand that can act like sandpaper if a glass or perspex dome port get ground into it for whatever reason. That said I've always been one to 'work' my gear. If anyone has ever seen me out on a shoot, especially a landscape shoot you'll have seen my scuffed and grazed main camera system. A camera isn't working unless it shows signs of having been worked, is one of my mantras!

And so my journey starts to retrace through footsteps past. Whereas I started out as a dedicated underwater video cameraman, then added photography to that bow and eventually a transition to predominantly more terrestrial media. I now see myself more often than not reaching for my dive mask, small body boarding fins and board shorts. Whether it be hanging out in the small waves on a beach just a few minutes walk from the apartment or heading into the Sea Turtle rich waters of the surrounding islands having an economic, yet powerful, underwater photographic / Video system that doesn't cost the earth is something to really get enthused about.

Reminiscent of the Surf Photography I used to shoot during my time in Bali, I find myself once more enjoying the waves.

"Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty" 

Mahatma Gandhi