Fred Dion is one heck of an entrepreneur; he keeps a tight store, staffed by only a few people but certainly very successful. At his shop, Underwater Photo-Tech, not only did he explain to me how cameras and strobes work underwater and how they differ from land, he gave me invaluable pointers on how to survive in the business/marketing/retail world, and told me how he got started in photography.
Fred and Dave are the owners and founders of Underwater Photo-Tech, an underwater photography and repair store in Derry, New Hampshire. www.uwphototech.com. I started off the day with a tour of the store and pointers on what has made his store successful, such as small, knowledgeable staff that willing to do anything for a customer (like manufacture custom parts on site). I spent the next few hours with MJ, watching her do Nikonos camera repair. Their collection of flooded Nikonos’ is huge! MJ explained many of the steps she takes to disassemble and solder the camera back together. It was very cool to see what the guts of the camera look like-especially when saturated with salt…ouch! After her repair, MJ puts the camera through a series of tests- light meter testing, and pressure chamber testing, for example- before she hands them over to Kelly to be checked out.
In addition to camera repair, I also got to check out some of Fred’s pictures and slide shows from his trips to Indonesia-I have never seen pictures of such gorgeous and exotic life!! He also taught me how to edit the pictures using different software on the computer. I learned invaluable information with Fred and the gang at Underwater Photo-Tech, it was an awesome day!