ENTRY DESCRIPTION
The moment you hit the water after sliding off the boat, you’re overcome by an overwhelming sense of nothingness. On occasion, you get a feeling I’d compare to vertigo as you try to orient yourself. When you look down and around your fins, you only see blue. There’s a vastness and scale to the ocean that you can’t process. Yet you dip your head below the surface on these drops and in all the nothingness, something appears. Unlike with most terrestrial wildlife, the third dimension is in play in the water, and you soon become surrounded by animals larger than anything you’ve seen before. Only a few miles off the coast of Dominica, the ocean floor plummets thousands of feet, making these close encounters even more fanciful.
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Sperm whales dive to great depths, sometimes for over an hour at a time, to hunt for squid in the pitch-black waters, pushing the boundaries of physiology. On rare occasions when they resurface for air, they will take a few moments to rest, sometimes vertically, in a scene that would look right at home in a Spielberg science fiction film.
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Whether it was the Bee Gees or Calvin Harris that came to mind with the title, the sentiment remains the same. In the seemingly endless expanses of the sea, comfort comes from closeness, not distance; from touch, not personal space. And it’s in these peaceful moments in the water you realize how we might just be more similar to these giants than we think.

AUTHOR
Eric's interest in photography began when his parents gave him an old film camera to use for his course in high school. While the class initially served as an escape from his rigorous biology and chemistry courses, it would eventually become the catalyst for each of his interests and passions melding into one. The film process revealed the "magic" of how science and technology could immortalize a scene in front of him. With this, his creative side would soon be unlocked.

Eric earned a Bachelor's Degree in Biology from Wake Forest University. He enjoyed his courses in physiology, molecular biology, and genetics, but it was ecology that grabbed his attention. The idea that life, across species and geographies, is intertwined resonated with him long after his classes concluded.

This concept has driven much of Eric's travel and work to date. He seeks to explore new cultures, new areas of the world, and unique wildlife with the hope that his images can deliver that same empowering idea to others that he felt in his studies — that we can all share some connection and hold interest in other people and living things, even when the link might not be apparent.

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