Mabul offers interesting diving, white beaches, palm trees, all the usual cliches associated with a coral island just north of the equator. However, it is it's proximity to the underwater nature reserve that surrounds the island of Siapadan that brings us so far. Discovered by Jaques Cousteau this is undoubtedly one of the world's best dive locations, permanently featuring in anybody's top 10 best sites. Sadly this popularity is slowly killing the place as a dive destination. The wildlife and underwater world are being protected by the introduction of a permit system that severely limits the number of divers who can visit. However, this has not stopped the ongoing construction of local hotels offering diving at Sipadan. 5 years ago when we first visited we could dive there everyday, now in a two week holiday, 3 or 4 visits is all that can be expected, soon it will be one. Then all Sipadan will offer to the serious diver is to say that once we dived this paradise.
I am lucky, I have experienced the best of Sipadan, but I am sad. I very much doubt I will ever see it again, it is simply not worth the cost and time to get there for so limited access. Sipadan is where I grew up as an underwater photographer, where I first delved into macro and finally figured out how to shoot large scale wide angle. It is truly a paradise for a photographer, I will really miss this.
As with my FEST book the problem with producing a book around a diving vacation is how to reduce the thousands of images to a manageable number and what narrative to weave. I wanted this book to present the photographs at their best and to span all that the location has to offer, from the small "critters" of Mabul and Kapalai, to the vast schools of fish and hunting sharks of Sipadan. I also wanted to include the world above the water, to chronicle a magical vacation as well as present scuba photos. I adopted a similar strategy to my FEST book, limiting the page designs to 3 very clean layouts:
The first layout I only used for above water images, the second only for underwater. The second layout uses the photographs as shot in their original aspect ratio. The full bleed two page spreads then enable me to capture and present the scale of the locations we visited. This is a large book, the pages are 11 x 13 inches, the full bleed spreads will be 26 inches wide! By using different designs for the above and under water images I am attempting to drive visual cohesion in the respective sections, but also state clearly that these are different worlds.
In the underwater imagery I have also tried to balance colour and form in the spreads, again I want this to work visually and avoid one photograph distracting from another. I did consider 1 image per two page spread, however, books this size have a high cost per page, so economy as well as aesthetics drove the design:
The highest impact photograph was saved for the cover
Early adoption of a narrative and structural design made the choice and sequencing of the photographs very much easier than in previous attempts. This is now my 7th volume of underwater photographs, an annual creation that chronicles an individual dive trip. I am thinking it might soon be time to create a single retrospective volume that looks at all that I have done over the 10 years. I am currently reading about book design and this is generating some ideas that I want to play with. I would like to create a book about the philosophy and practice of underwater photography, using my work as illustration. There are many excellent books on this subject written by accomplished professionals, so I would need to do something other than a how to, something personal and reflective.
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