Digital Shootout: Christmas Tree Worms

As the two interns invited to the Digital Shootout, both myself and Jemma Paradise (the Our World Underwater photography intern, who I became good friends with over those two weeks) each made a small film for the Shootout crew to show before the awards ceremony on the final day. Jemma focused on the tarpon we saw on our night dives, and I picked…Christmas tree worms!

Christmas tree worms are found at almost every dive site in Bonaire, and are really common in tropical waters around the world. They’re a staple of Caribbean diving, and something that I feel a lot of divers tend to pass over in favor of other subjects. I’ve always thought they were whimsical, with all the different colorations and patterns they can have, so I used them to practice my macro photography and snooting. This posed an extra challenge when it came to video, since we were not supposed to use tripods on the reef and I had to be as stable as I could without one. Christmas tree worms don’t move, but you do have to be careful not to spook them too much with your movement or light, or they’ll vanish into their tunnels in the coral. I learned recently that their spiral structures act as gills, so the worms can’t breathe when they’re hidden away from predators (or divers). They have to re-emerge to be able to breathe, even when they don’t know if it’s safe yet or not. With this in mind, I tried my best not to spook them when I was shooting them.

One of my initial storyboards

Some of the seminars throughout the Shootout covered various video editing techniques for editing in Premier Pro, like white balance and color correction, stabilization, and slow motion. Sea Rover and Shootout crew Joel Penner was a huge help in getting my own video off the ground, since I was using DaVinci Resolve instead. Having the theory from the seminars was really helpful, but I definitely needed Joel’s help when it came to understanding where to find different tools in the interface and finding a good workflow. Originally I had big ambitions of doing a highlight on Christmas Tree Worms, nature documentary style. Sea Rovers Berkley White and Cristian Dimitrius were incredibly generous with their help, making sure that they were able to give me the guidance that I needed to see my plans through.Cristian is an incredibly inspiring cinematographer and a truly generous person, and I learned a lot from his storytelling seminars.He was really kind and went through several iterations of storyboards with me, brainstorming interesting shots or ways to set up my story. Eventually, we realized that my mini-documentary idea was a bit too ambitious, and I needed to find a different way to tell the story I wanted to.

Partway through the Shootout, I had gone to Sea Rover Erin Quigley’s nighttime talk about her own journey in underwater photography. She started out as a Shootout guest before joining the crew and becoming the amazing photographer and post-processing wizard she is today. I met Erin at the Sea Rovers Symposium in March, and was really excited that I would be able to spend more time learning from her at the Shootout as well. It was really inspiring to hear her story, and she closed her talk by reading two quotes she wanted to share. After her session, Erin and I talked some more and she gave me really valuable insight and advice about finding the same fulfillment and joy in my career as she has. It made me even more excited for the opportunities of the Internship, and for my journey as a diver. The quotes she read lived in the back of my mind for the rest of the Shootout, and when it became clear I bit off a tad more than I could chew with my dreams of a mini-nature-documentary, I found myself thinking about those poems again. I decided to use those quotes as narration, since they carried the same resilience, perseverance, and hope that I had been surprised to find in Christmas tree worms.

I’m proud of the final product I was able to make, especially considering that it’s the first video I’ve ever made, and that I didn’t use a tripod for any of the shots! You can find the final video here. I’d love to make that more documentary-esqe video later on, but I’m glad I decided to give myself more creative freedom with this one. I definitely couldn’t have done any of it without the mentorship of Erin, Joel, Berkley, and Cristian, so I am incredibly grateful for all of the guidance, inspiration, and help they and the rest of the Shootout crew gave me throughout those two weeks! I can’t wait to keep shooting and learning as I continue on my photography journey.

— Sofia