ENTRY DESCRIPTION
In a medium that’s meant to drive feeling, emotion, and a message, sometimes you can’t escape the reality that you are playing a numbers game. It’s one in which the house should always win, but you take the plunge into the cold, dark water anyway.

There’s no studio, controlled lighting, models, or bait to attract your subjects. You have your long freedive fins, a wetsuit that feels like it’s constantly choking you, a camera encased in a cumbersome housing, and a prayer.

Over the course of five days on the water, I’d estimate there was a minute or two in total where there was the chance of capturing something worthy. Five or six images over the span of a week that might be worthy.

In this moment, I was gifted with a pod of orcas forming their bait ball to feed on. I caught a glimpse of two large bull orcas maintaining the shape of the fish out of the corner of my eye. I turned, locked focus, and managed to snap a few images just in time. A coordinated dance of two apex predators. Not their last, but likely the last that many of these herring would witness.

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.

back to gallery