Book Review: Lights! Camera! Sub Action!

Staff · Issue 106, Jan/Feb 2019 · pp. 64–66

Products mentioned: Lights! Camera! Sub Action! by Mike Seares

Lights! Camera! Sub Action! is an engaging read about how an early enthusiasm for scuba diving combined with determination and fortuitous encounters led to a longterm involvement in what was to be the emergence of real underwater photography in the movie industry. When I say real I mean not those which are almost a parody shot through a glass bottom bucket of underwater scenery which almost always included a shark and a menacing sound score. This is an account of how talented people from the diving world were embraced into the big scale world of cinema movies and how, perhaps without realising it, they changed the way producers and directors looked upon underwater imagery. The journey begins in the mid 70s when scuba and certainly underwater photography were still in their infancy and very much minority sports but, as so many from this era will testify, it had an appeal which was vice-li…