Nicholas Remy - The Underwater Club

Are you intrigued by the complexities of underwater photography? Nicolas Remy (multi award-winning underwater photographer and founder of The Underwater Club) joins me in the studio to shed some light on this intricate art.

Nicolas and his wife Lena caught my attention initially with their stunning photos and furthermore because they dived on rebreathers. To me, rebreather diving to photograph marine life makes inherent sense, and I wanted to explore this fascinating topic with Nicolas in this episode. The extended dive times, the silence, and the opportunity to get much closer to your subject without disturbance are some of the benefits Nicolas highlights, while also discussing the two rebreathers they use, the Revo and Horizon.

Not only does Nicolas take a superb shot; he enjoys sharing his skills with others. Teaching people and breaking subjects down into a more understandable format is truly a passion of his. So, Nicolas has quit the corporate world and devoted the last 18 months to fine-tuning The Underwater Club and its contents. It is an exceptional forum for two-way communications and jam-packed with Nicolas' knowledge to be shared with all club members through various means, expanding on his availability as a one-on-one coach.

A keen writer, he has also penned content for Scuba Diver magazine and Narked at 90, with additional content in WETPIXEL and OZ Diver.

We anticipate the launch of the Underwater Club's website very soon; to stay in the loop you can sign up for the newsletter (and have an added chance to win a prize).  Join me in the studio as Nicolas takes us from his first discover scuba dive on Kangaroo Island, to global recognition for his underwater photography and the formation of The Underwater Club.

DON'T FORGET TO SIGN UP FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN A PRIZE! DO THAT HERE

Nicholas' Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicolaslenaremy

Nicolas & Lena on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolaslenaremy/

Photography website:ht

The Underwater Club with Nicolas Remy
10% discount on the annual subscription to The Underwater Club with promo code SCUBAGOAT

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Matt Waters: 0:07

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Scuba go Podcast where we explore the fascinating world of Scuba diving and ocean exploration. This week we are talking photography and rebreathers with multi award winning photographer, Nicholas roaming. With a passion for the ocean and its inhabitants. Nicholas captures the beauty of the underwater world through his lens and is eager to share his art with fellow enthusiasts. However, Nicholas is not just a photographer, but a bit of a super geek. He analyses situations, technical products, heck, anything that needs analysing gets analysed. He also loves to help aspiring photographers capture that perfect underwater image. And so with his expertise in underwater photography, love for the ocean, and abilities to formulate plans and procedures, he has created the underwater club. Now, the underwater club is an online community that anyone can subscribe to, regardless of your level of experience. Over the last couple of years, he has tirelessly devoted himself to producing detailed bite size videos and a multitude of classes to share his expertise with all club members. Welcome to the show, buddy.

Nicholas Remy: 1:13

Thank you, Matt. Nice to meet you in person.

Matt Waters: 1:15

It's been a while I think I've been I've been watching what you and Lena have been doing since I got to Sydney, which is what almost five years now. I think

Nicholas Remy: 1:23

you're right. I think we've been I think we've got to Sydney sort of a decent time though. Yeah, yeah. Five years ago, something like that. Yeah.

Matt Waters: 1:30

Yeah. Well, I only came for a visit initially. And then hey, presto, here we are. Yeah, right. Why don't you start off the show. Let's have a little bit about you. Why are we sat here and gonna talk about stuff?

Nicholas Remy: 1:45

Okay. Well, my name is Nikolas Remy. A French born gay. I'm 39 years old now. What can I say? I've got a lovely two Cheeky monkeys at home, keeping me busy and entertained.

Matt Waters: 2:03

By Cheeky monkeys, you mean kids? Right?

Nicholas Remy: 2:07

wasn't clear. And I've got a wife as well, who happens to be a diver, underwater photographer and entered river diver as well. Yeah. So I have lots of things in common. And yeah, the main reason I came the same time as you to Sydney was essentially my passion for diving. And yeah, look, a few years later, I decided to make underwater photography a full time thing for myself. And I guess that has to do with the fact the fact that we're talking now. Yeah, but Yeah, happy days. Yeah,

Matt Waters: 2:41

yeah. The thing that caught my attention when you were doing all the socials, because obviously, when you get bored in an evening, we all do it. We just got to scroll through socials, your photos pop up, and you delve a little bit deeper. And the first thing I remember seeing of you guys, and I mean, yourself, and Lena was going dive in getting these amazing, amazing shots. But you were doing it on rebreathers. So that was the different thing that caught my attention. Right? Initially, it wasn't the shots initially, it was the fact you were doing it on rebury. That's because obviously, I've been told by many people, if you're on a rebreather, there's no bubble as you get closer to the critters, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's exactly what you've been doing. Right?

Nicholas Remy: 3:18

That's right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we reverse, really, that the the photographer's best friends, as long as I guess you can, you know, sort of keep your attention, giving them a little bit of attention that they need to sort of keep diving safe. They're just fantastic for for for underwater photography. I mean, you get closer to wildlife, you spend much more time in the water, you don't have to worry too much about, you know, you don't have to worry so much about things like caravans. The opportunities are very different. And that's, yeah, that's why we both we will reproduce on a regular basis. Every every time we dive basically.

Matt Waters: 3:55

Yeah, yeah. And you gotta get a couple of hours on the water as well. Yeah,

Nicholas Remy: 3:59

I mean, it's, it has to do a little bit with the Cheeky monkeys I talked about at the beginning. We we've been together and I much before we had, you know, projects of starting a family diving has been our thing since nearly the beginning. And at some point, we're like, okay, we would like to have kids together. And then, you know, we looked around what others were doing, and usually they were giving up on diving or sort of, you know, full on passion, right? And then without, okay, there's lots of, I guess, life adjustments we're very much willing to do, but stopping diving is not an option at all. So we're thinking, okay, and the thing is, I guess if there's one person in the relationship diving, not the other, you can always, you know, lock some time for you and have a bit of me time, but we wanted to keep diving together. And we thought, okay, what's our young parent life going to be like in terms of diving? And we thought, we need to just look at time for diving Every weekend, we were both working full time. So every weekend, there will be a time for that where we won't be parents will be diverse. And we said, well, let's say Saturday morning, we have to look to some time, Saturday morning, we'll find a babysitter, and maybe we'll trust them with the kids for Health Day, how they seemed like, what we were comfortable to do. Not not a full day, but have they seemed reasonable. And then we said, okay, so if we leave the kids to the babysitter, we drive to wherever is the shortest dive site, we go in the water, we dive, well, one hour on the boat, maybe, then we want to have another dive, we all do service interval, we actually don't have time. And we don't want our dive routine to be one hour per week. So we're like, Okay, what else could we do? Well, to save time, you save time by not exiting the water, not preparing your gear, not changing things and all that. And long story short, you know, time after time, we said, Okay, well, why don't we just spend a good three hours in the water. And this way we make 100%, the most of the time that we're giving ourselves to keep on enjoying diving. And that's what took us the

Matt Waters: 6:08

happy days. So the bank balances well, in the negatives, having bought a couple of rebreathers.

Nicholas Remy: 6:16

Yeah, and that's, that's probably a thing about, about us as divers. When I chat with, you know, other divers very quickly, you start talking about travel, where you've been and all that. And I think I've been diving now since 16 years, something like that. And I think people are always surprised to see how little I have travelled, you know, compared to how long I've been diving. And that's because, yeah, our live setup has been around. How can we lock in as much diving hours as we can per week. And that may imply, you know, not being able to travel so easily outside? Yeah. And that's why Sydney so so that's also why we came to Sydney. Because we realised that well, if we only have going to dive three hours per week in one shot, and we have to be in a city that's big enough for both of us to find a job. Yeah. Where in the world could that be? And Sydney ticks the box really well for those things.

Matt Waters: 7:11

Nice one. Nice one. What does it was it Lena does then what's the what's the job that she's doing?

Nicholas Remy: 7:15

She's smoking in it. She's doing project management. Nice.

Matt Waters: 7:19

Okay, so does she get to choose like Project lengths and then just have a little bit of time off and crack on with it, load more dive in and then pick up the next job. For

Nicholas Remy: 7:29

now, I think that would be a good thing for her. That would be a great setup for her. But for now what she's doing is she's a full time employee. Okay, so it's more, it's more a weekend thing for her plus the odd trip every year or something like that. Yeah,

Matt Waters: 7:41

yeah. And what were you doing before you went full time on what we're going to talk about?

Nicholas Remy: 7:46

Yeah, I was doing at CMOS Linna. Actually, we, we started working in the same company. And we've been doing it together, sort of together for a few years, until I finally choose to switch back.

Matt Waters: 7:58

Yeah, run away. So where did it all start? Then? Because you mentioned you've been driving for 16 years? Yep. What did you learn? Um,

Nicholas Remy: 8:09

so funnily enough, not too far from here. Okay. So, long time ago, we started dating back in the day we were, we were studying in the same engineering school back in France. And the school had an exchange programmes with a few universities and one of them was Wollongong University. All right, and we thought, wow, Australia, Hey, that sounds you know, I had a family history of, you know, being an expat living abroad. And after a few years in France, being a student doing those things, I was like, yeah, it tickles me. I want to go travel again. And, and some guy from the same engineering school came back from Wollongong and you say, Wow, guys, you have you can believe in the lifestyle there. It's so amazing. And all that. And I spoke with him and I was like, you have to go and that sounds fantastic. And lucky for me, Lena was didn't have much, much experience travelling at the time, but she said, Oh, you're going we'll go with you. Okay, you know, for for, you know, we were just a young young couple with not so much history, but then she said, I'll go as well. Alright. And then we jumped on a plane to Australia. And a bit before we did that, actually. She told me Hey, did you ever try Scuba diving? And I'm like, No, but I've always meant to at some point, you know, probably and she said, You know what, Australia apparently is pretty good for that. Like, Ah, okay. And, yeah, long story short, we ended up in Wollongong. And, I mean, before that, we were travelling a little bit before settling down here. And at some point on the trip, it was my birthday. And such a lovely girlfriend. She had planned to try die for me when she didn't know. And then we were in Kangaroo Island and she said, hey, you know what? Tomorrow we're going to Dave, we're going to be this guy here. He's going to teach us and we're going to dive brilliant. No, I was terrified. You know, I was like decompression sickness, how am I going to cope with the safety stubs and all those things? I was very stressed actually. And then he took us to a dazzling two metres depth, you know, and I managed to survive and a lot of these

Matt Waters: 10:13

brilliant and never looked back,

Nicholas Remy: 10:15

never looked back. I mean, then we went to settle down in Wollongong we learnt diving investment not too far from here. Yeah. Loved it. Lots of diving during the year. And then we went back to France because family reasons, essentially. And then we dove essentially in the Mediterranean Sea for about 10 years until we came back here.

Matt Waters: 10:36

Okay. Okay. What do you see in the med?

Nicholas Remy: 10:39

Ye that much?

Matt Waters: 10:43

Plenty of RX. Yeah.

Nicholas Remy: 10:44

Some RX? Yeah, definitely good RX. Yeah, the thing is, I'm sure the med has potential to be sensational. But it's a sea that has been surrounded by so many people. For a long time over history. There's been lots of overfishing, pollution at times where we didn't know better, we didn't know what we were doing. And you can see the results. So back in Hong Kong, we were diving invest points. You know, we jump in the gutter, one of the popular spots today. And often enough, you will see a sea dragon, you would see a big blue grouper coming right at your face. A big blue ray at a time when I was very short. sighted. Yeah, yep. short sighted. But you didn't need a prescription mess because the things were so massive that you will see anyways, right? Yeah. And then we go to France will end next to Cannes, we find the dive shop they take as diving. And for young divers, we're just open water certified. You know, we're not used to going deep and doing those things. The guy pulls us down from zero to 14 metres very fast. And we are like, you know, a bit stressed. But okay. And we're thinking that we're going to 40 metres, we're going to have to tell that out to all our dive buddies, and I'm sure we're going to see some crazy things at 40 metres, where we saw one lobster, and maybe two siblings, and that was it. They were like, Oh, crap. And then we asked ourselves are we actually going to keep diving or do we just keep on the regular basis? Or do we keep that for you know, the trip to the Red Sea once a year and that's it. But eventually we decided we really liked being in the water and, you know, that's for we kept looking diving, but for sure the the med as a few as a few things we really liked, you know, big dramatic landscapes. Nice gorgonians but from a wildlife perspective, get not not comparable to the

Matt Waters: 12:45

or what's your what's your favourite so far? Wildlife?

Nicholas Remy: 12:51

Like animal? Ah, I think I there's a few but I think I really liked the I was going to say with your leafy lettuce, the leafy Seadragon

Matt Waters: 13:03

PVC dragon.

Nicholas Remy: 13:03

Yeah, so lovely.

Matt Waters: 13:05

I've yet to take those off. We're gonna go we're gonna go this year, but I've got Galapagos trips. So that's where we go next year. Yeah, it's not. It's not a bad excuse not to go to the South Australia. Yeah.

Nicholas Remy: 13:17

And it's really easy to go. I mean, you as long as you know where to go. We can talk about that. It's from the shore shadow, easy and beautiful creatures.

Matt Waters: 13:28

I think that's the beauty here as well. You've just mentioned depth. But along the coastlines here in Australia, you don't need a lot of depth to say such a vast array of critters and creatures. Biodiversity is insane. And

Nicholas Remy: 13:44

we were really fortunate. I've read somewhere that in Sydney Harbour Sydney's natural harbour there's more fish species than in the world Mediterranean.

Matt Waters: 13:54

That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, there probably is more fish in my bath that I don't own than what's in the Mediterranean.

Nicholas Remy: 14:04

Yeah, possibly. Now we've very gifted on this. I have landed in Sydney, like I said, more than five years ago, a bit more than five years ago now. And I thought, okay, there's like, what 30 shore dive sites, that will certainly be a good, good basis to keep us entertained. And then a bunch of other boat dives. And we're thinking okay, and there's some wreck dives as well. And in those five years, I think I've done one, maybe two bad days and that's it, because they're not good but because the show diving is so good, so spectacular, that you know for what I do, which is photography. I enjoy so much going there spending three hours or even even more and you know, having those amazing, amazing things to further if

Matt Waters: 14:50

I'm making the most of this week because my other half jazz, she's away in New Zealand for the week with work, right? So I'm gonna go and hit Clifton gardens a few times and just spend all the time I'm in the world on my camera and macro. Because she's not a massive macro fan. So she gets bored if I'm taking a shot so

Nicholas Remy: 15:07

much time. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, especially that time of the year the water is very warm. Seven,

Matt Waters: 15:13

while speaking to Ken, Ken Tang pillar. Oh, this one. I think they did a night dive on Saturday, it was like 2021 degrees. Nice. I'm not even gonna bother with a wetsuit. I'll just pull the shark skin on.

Nicholas Remy: 15:26

Yeah, that is. But I've been there yesterday evening, actually. Oh, yeah. So by the way, if, if I'm asking you to repeat something, I may still have water in between the ears. So don't don't take offence.

Matt Waters: 15:36

That's all right. Like mine on age.

Nicholas Remy: 15:40

But um, yeah, there was fantastic bit a bit murky, but there's always so much to see.

Matt Waters: 15:46

Yeah, yeah, to get all the usual critters. Yeah.

Nicholas Remy: 15:50

And that's a good time in the year for angler fish for fish. And that's a time where this is you can see them meeting or you know, having a bit of an interesting behaviour. And yesterday evening, Linda showed me one push me to actually just next to each other. And it was like, Gee, that might be the moment that might be the time a year or one very lovely yellow with, like stripes on his hands. And another one, which was more pale pink with dark brown stripes next to each other. So I started taking photos and waiting but nothing happened. Well, that's what they did. So if you go in the main domain GT dementia dissection, where most of the fishermans are, if you look towards the inside of the Hubble that would be on the pillars on the right. If they don't move there will be there.

Matt Waters: 16:40

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'll have a look. We went out there last week. And there was there were two side by side down towards the end of the jetty a yellow one and a black one, much smaller black one. If they weren't getting jiggy, jiggy, migraine, no official like bliss, anything.

Nicholas Remy: 16:56

But the thing is that it's when they finish the it's it's dinnertime. Yeah.

Matt Waters: 17:00

Ciao. Literally. Yeah. Okay, cool. Okay, so the underwater club? Yes. What's this all about?

Nicholas Remy: 17:12

So, the underwater club is, is is a big term in my relationship with diving and underwater photography. Many years, it's all been about just enjoying myself taking photos. And you know, the best way I could spend my time was being in the wearer taking photos. And the next best way was possibly being next to Linda while she was taking photos, and perhaps I was looking for, you know, stuff for her to photograph watching over her, helping her with lighting and doing those things together. Yeah, but that was really that was that was really neat. And then COVID came, and like everyone had a bit more, a bit less work, actually, yeah, but a bit of more free time on my on my hands, a good time to a good time to reflect. And I had, I guess I had grown a little bit frustrated that myself on the way I had, I was managing my time. So I came to Australia to enjoy diving in Sydney, essentially, because I knew it was so good, plus the odd dive trip once a year maybe. And then I realised that guess what diving is really so good. And we know about it because we experience it. And we have a lovely community of people with the visibility group in Facebook, where you can exchange tips share what you've seen in a dive. So you know what's happening there in the community, in the dive sites. And because of the routines that we had managed to set up, you know, around our kids, our dive was going to be Saturday morning, and that's it. So if for whatever reason, Saturday was a crappy time to dive, you know, tire change, big rain, whatever the case might be your big swell in the wrong direction. That's where we're going to dive if there was some crazy good conditions or some interesting wildlife spotty, the middle of the week, or on Sunday evening. Too bad too sad. I couldn't go diving. And I was working a lot. my corporate job was very, very demanding. And very interesting at the same time, but busy days with customers during during the normal nine to five and busy evenings because it's a I used to work for a European company. So in the evenings, I was catching up with colleagues with Europe. So very, very packed lifestyle. And I realised at some point that, you know, in a regular week, there was very few time for me to say hey, I really want to do what I want to do, which is more diving. And it was thinking again, I chose to become the father. I love my Cheeky monkeys. And it just to have this IT job. Well, it's a great job, but I love my kids even more. So if there's one thing I'm going to change, it's the job and the public key. How can I you know, make a living around underwater photography and And nowadays, as you as you know, you can't, you can't really pay all your bills by just setting photos. That is something that was possible maybe 20 years ago. But nowadays, you have to do a few different things to, to make up your new lifestyle, basically. So I started to think, what are some of the things that I'm good at, and that I would enjoy doing for the time that I'm not taking photos in my new life. And it struck me that in all, all the all the jobs I've had, during my corporate career, there was one thing in common, very, very different jobs. But one thing is common, is that I was on a regular basis having to explain complex topics, in a simple way. Because the person I was going to explain it to was less technical or less expert me on the topic. And, and I guess that was my talent, there was something I was good at doing. And I realised as well, that was something I really liked to doing. I really enjoyed that process to, you know, be with the person, hear their questions, put myself in their shoes, and see, okay, how can I take that person with me to understanding this new thing that they need to understand? I really enjoyed that process. So then I told myself, well, I'm going to teach underwater photography, that's, that's something I would enjoy doing a lot. And then came the question. And this took this process took quite a few months to get the final ID, but dedicated came the question of, how am I going to teach. So typical example. There's a few underwater photographers teaching this way you organise a trip, you take, you take, you know, a number of students on a trip with you. When you're on the trip, you have workshops, you have classes, you show them techniques, and you explain a few things. And that is something I'm going to do on a case by case basis. For example, in next January, I'm going to do that with Linda resort during 10 days. But that's going to be another thing, because I've realised that there is another way to learn underwater photography, which is essentially how I've learned but upgraded in a way. So essentially, the, the observation I came to was that all the moments where I learned, I learned a lot with reading books, I'm very analytical person. So I guess that that's how I'm comfortable learning. And I realised that all the aha moments where I realised that I've been improved, I've been able to master a new technique to take better photos of the subject or the situations, the aha moments was not underwater, the aha moment attends at home, talking with someone in the bar, in between dives. In the water was the time where I would test the idea that I had before, hey, if I would put my stroke this way, I'm going to project the animal's shadows here, then doing that I'm going to help the silhouette of the animal pop out from the background will be less distracting. So I had all these ideas in between dives. And then it will just be a case of practising in the world to just test the ideas that test my understanding was okay. And then that's how I came down to the idea of founding, creating the underwater club. So the underwater club is in simple terms. It's an online underwater photography school, where I've created I've put basically everything I know in terms of underwater photography, in the format of essentially video lessons. And, and it's about to go live in a few weeks time now.

Matt Waters: 23:49

Yeah, congratulations, a lot of hard work on it.

Nicholas Remy: 23:53

Yeah. When we started, I had to, you know, of course, asking his opinion a few times, because there will be a bit of time during which he would have, you know, to cope with me not having an income and investing my time on something else. Yeah. Which he really liked the ID. The only thing is at the beginning, I told her, Okay, I'm going to do a bit of concept and design on the website, you know, make sure I have the right components. I know how to build it. And then there will be a time where I'm going to put together these, these online courses. I'm going to script them. I'm going to film the videos, I'm going to edit them and all that. And then you know, just package it on the website launch and that's it. The gender workload is life. And I told her, yeah, the course is production. It's going to take about five to six weeks. She said okay, yep, that's fine. We can we can deal with that. Okay. It took a year and a half.

Matt Waters: 24:53

Hey, she's not divorced, so you must be doing something right.

Nicholas Remy: 24:56

It's something. Yeah, I was very nervous to tell him where or hadn't let's say I had registered the first recorded the first course. And I realised that we need much more time to do the whole thing again to her. I said, Look, this is what I've been doing. This is the time I've taken to record these first few lessons. For example, at the beginning, when we, when we drafted the, the plan of the courses and the lessons, we would say, okay, there will be a lesson on, let's say, portrait photography, how do you turn? You know, how do you move away from just an ID shot of a fish into a report went with character. And I said, well, the video is probably going to be three minutes long, you know, a script detail, speak quickly, and three minutes that that's it. And then 40 minutes of video, you need selections too much time to film, but that's going to be quick enough. The video is about 15 minutes, because there's actually so much to say on the topic, especially if you want the person listening to be able to, you know, not be lost in translation or not lose track of what's being being said. So, I asked her, I said, Do you still want to move forward? Are you still happy for me to spend well, much more time in building this? And she looked at all the plan I put together? And she said, Well, we've everything you've scripted here, there's enough to fill two or maybe three underwater photography books. So you don't write two or three books in one month. It does take time. So yeah, that no, that makes sense. Keep going. And you know, thumbs up, then they went.

Matt Waters: 26:33

As that saying goes behind every good man, there's an even better woman. And I'm just sitting here listening to you talk through this. And I have exactly the same at home. With reconstructing my travel company and, and jazz, just keep going, keep going, keep going. And those Fuckit moments where you've had a shit day and walk away from the computer, there's always she's always there to say, All right, I will come back to it tomorrow. Keep going.

Nicholas Remy: 27:01

We're lucky and we are very, very lucky. It's that it's that emotional support, I mean, to start so that that sounding board you have as well, not being just with yourself testing the ideas. And I mean, I also have tested quite a few ideas with with friends. But the thing is with friends, people sometimes are just polite. Yes. So you know, you don't you don't you're not always sure that exactly how they how they feel. Although I did ask for you know, brutally honest feedback and and I've got some of it. I have tested the ideas and the format, interviewing a few people, quite a few people actually a while ago, including yourself. Yep, I remember. Yeah, but but definitely having a little support for a number of a number of many ways actually has been fantastic.

Matt Waters: 27:47

I just want to say that person. So excuse me. So with with regards to the dive in and the photography, did the photography start online before or did the dive in introduce you to photography,

Nicholas Remy: 28:07

and the photography started just essentially before, but just just a little bit before? I came very late to photography are you doing? Yeah, you're right. But I want to hear how you started as well. But um, I guess for me, I used to play around with my mom's camera when it was a kid, you know, old film camera, and they enjoyed it. But also remember from from the time that the camera was only capable of taking Okay, shots during the day. If it was, you know, dinner time, it was a bit dark in the place. Unless you had the flush going on. Everything didn't look good, basically. And you've had the flush going on people had a funny face. It just didn't affect Well, I don't really like the sort of I don't really like the sort of results that the camera can take in many situations. So I went a bit away from from a from photography at the time. And then, I guess, one year before we moved to Australia as the first time as students, I stumbled upon a photography magazine, you know, in in the station about it out of curiosity, because I was going to take the train with Lynne at the time. And, you know, we didn't have smartphones, iPhones, I was going to get bored with the magazine to write something that made us so different. That's good to get bored. Sometimes it is fantastic. But anyway, so I pulled this magazine. I can't remember why. But it was in France. It was the biggest pornographic magazine and the most popular one. So the name The name meant something for me. And then I read this article, and it was about some guy at the time that he was what 2006 So it was, you know, digital seminars were starting to become more popular and more affordable for people. And someone was doing Something really interesting. He had device here designed a device where he could what was it, he was going to pop a champagne bottle. And there was a device going to capture the sound of the popping and trigger a very very fast flash that was going to freeze the motion of that the champion of the cork article, yeah, the cork instrumentation and you will be able to photograph it. And I saw this crazy photo where you have the cork frozen with the champion coming and the guy did something else he did like used like, like, again, not not again, with big bullets, the small one, you know what I mean? Or like a little pellet. Yeah, pellet pellet gun to shoot on, dices on the few objects, and it would capture crazy motion where the pellet starts to crush on the dice. Okay, so not so artistic, but very interesting, technically. And it was like GE cameras have come a long way. That's really cool. And it was more of my, I guess, my technical mindset that was interested in the in the science and and all that. So I was like, okay, that's really cool. You can really have fun with those things. No. And then I started reading more magazines. And I got into just the technicalities at the beginning was like, okay, and then I started reading the reader's courier section of the magazine where people would send photos and, and the journalist would critique the photos. There was like, Okay, that's interesting composition that I started to get into it. And but at the time, it was just, it was just land photography, but I was really getting hooked. And, and then Linda told me this this time when we were booking our tickets to Australia, and she said, Hey, did you know that Australia was really good for diving? And it was like, Okay, I've always been fascinated by the water. I've always I grew up in Africa, in in a place where I was not far from the sea. But we only had big rolling waves. So there was never a place where the weather was clear for me to go snorkelling. So I've always meant all my childhood to go and see what was there. There was no clear weather for me to go. Work in Africa, Cameroon.

Matt Waters: 32:12

Oh, really? That's a random one. How do you end up there?

Nicholas Remy: 32:16

My parents were working there. Okay. Yeah. So childhood in Cameroon, there was a river by the place we, in my early years, we were living in, in the, in the bush in the jungle, there was a nice river with nice fish going there. Sometimes a snake, sometimes a few other animals. But again, the river was murky, and not very safe to swim into for other reasons as well. So crocodiles and stuff like that, right? So so I've had all these childhood where I wanted to get in the water, but I couldn't. So the only thing I could do is just, you know, walk on the rocks, look in the puddles be like, oh, there's a fish. There's a crab and being excited about that. So when you say diving, I was like, Yeah, that sounds really scary. But at some point, I do want to do something like that. I do. And I was getting hooked. We've learned photography. And before we could go to Australia, I had an internship for six months working in, in an IT company as well in Paris back in the days. And so I was having was going to spend six months, every day, one hour commute in the in the metro train. And I thought, Okay, I've learned a fair bit about photography, with magazines, and all that. If I'm going to go diving, I might as well learn underwater photography. And then I picked the first book, a book with 150 pages of underwater photography. And I read it in the in the daily commute, and was like, that's fantastic. That's I was really getting hooked. And I finished the first book, which was like the beginner level book. Then I bought the advanced book, and I read it as well. It was like, wow, split shots, macro shots, before getting in the water before getting certified. Yeah. Yeah, so I was I was getting hooked in a very twisted way. But yeah, by the time I got certified, I knew how to use an underwater camera. I just didn't have one.

Matt Waters: 34:02

Yeah, that's, that's the problem. What was the first one you got?

Nicholas Remy: 34:07

It was a good one, though. It was the Nikon D 300. I was I was so so hooked. So we had a little comeback to the camera, and I for for our most of our time in Australia. But then I had a side job, you know, after the university so I could save a bit of money. And I was clear that I wanted the proper DSLR so I saved all that money. And then when I could finally afford it, bang Detroit 100 And like five lenses. Yeah. And it was so crazy excited about, you know, all the photography time that whenever I would go somewhere, had a bag full of all the lenses, which is totally nonsense because there's no place where you're going to use a macro lens, a short macro lens, a long macro lens, a wide angle lens, a fisheye lens and a portrait lens and a telephoto lens, right. But it was carrying the whole thing. Sometimes it was like gee, it's really heavy. One time we were stepping in on the way back to France with Lena in Hong Kong for a few days, we had a bit of vacation in Hong Kong. And I loved the town. We had fantastic time there. But then I realised that it was really hot. And it was carrying what 10 kilogrammes of photography gear in my backpack. And there was not a fly. No, Hong Kong is very concrete, right? There's no birds. There's no, I couldn't see much flies in the city. And then I realised, man, maybe I don't need that macro lenses to macro lenses in my bag after all.

Matt Waters: 35:31

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've done the same after I've travelled with all these lenses. And you spent two or three weeks away and come back and realise you've only used one lens in the entire time that you've been away? Yeah, yeah. It's a steep learning curve.

Nicholas Remy: 35:47

We got, I guess you said the beginning when you when you get when you get the hook, right? You see all those nice photos. You know, Sky photography, animals, portraits, black and white weddings, wildlife in Israel, those things and when you do everything, then you realise that good especially somehow to get really good at something.

Matt Waters: 36:08

I've learned very quickly to think about what I'm going out to do. And there's always gonna be something you want us to photograph that you've got the right lens for, but it's better than carrying that 10 kilos. Yeah.

Nicholas Remy: 36:22

How did you get into photography yourself?

Matt Waters: 36:25

Very similar to you to be honest. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't go balls out and spend 1000s on a nick on straightaway though, I've got a GoPro. But as a kid, I did exactly the same. My dad, he played around with photography and enjoyed it. And he had an old DSLR. And I used to play around with it a little bit. Never understood it. But every Christmas we'd get like a disposable Polaroid or something like that in the Christmas stocking. Or one of those? I don't know. How old are you? 39. Okay, to remember the old disposable cameras that you could mount like six bulb flashes on the top. And when they got used they were gone. So he didn't have developed so yeah, and he didn't give me when I got and 10 years. 10 years on it. Yeah, camera. Yeah, gotta go. But yeah, I used to get those as well. And we'd have the disappointment of taking the the old rails or the old rolls of instead of camera to film, sorry, to the local pharmacy and wait a week to see what you've got. You know that a 36 You'd get to two photos that are okay, that's about it. So it never really grabbed me in a great way until I started going underwater. And I say I got a I got a GoPro. In fact, it was the year I left the military and went on a six month diving holiday on my own just headed for Thailand. Right. And I took a GoPro with me it was the first GoPro that I bought.

Nicholas Remy: 37:56

Oh, that's when you went you became divemaster. And you started teaching, right?

Matt Waters: 38:00

Yeah, just Yeah, I was on holiday and then just randomly got asked if I'd like to take over a dive master position eventually. And instead of going back to the UK after six months holiday, I thought, Okay, I'm gonna stay there's beers, beaches, women in bikinis living the dream that I had to I. But yeah, so I started with a GoPro, and then it was or maybe in 2015 2016, something like that. I picked up a Canon g7 X mark two. And that's when I started to kind of focus on what I was trying to do with it. And eventually ended up with a couple of strobes, which completely threw me off. First god knows how long the road Yeah, and then about a year, 18 months, no 18 months ago now, I love the camera, Canon M six mark two. And that just threw me straight back into learning how to use a camera again, because you go from a compact to a, you know, a mirrorless and everything changes.

Nicholas Remy: 39:08

So, it's the next level of complexity, right? It is

Matt Waters: 39:11

yeah. And you kind of get up to the I got up to the maximum that I could do with a compact and then thought, right? I've got to take the leap. I'm gonna get a mirrorless because it's it's lighter and smaller, easier to carry on overseas trips, all that kind of stuff, blah, blah, blah. And stumped for that one look good camera. But it put me right back into the novice group again. Yeah,

Nicholas Remy: 39:31

it's I remember when when I finally got my D free Android, my first DSLR the thing we had before was like, back at the time it was popular type of camera it was called the bridge camera. So it's like a compact with with a very big zoom lens, basically. And it was very easy to use. You know, you would see what you're shooting basically the lecture on the compact camera, like on a compact camera. And the day I started using the DSLR was like gee, there's a steep learning curve, but same thing with your mirrorless cameras those things have so many options, you can do everything manually. But until you figure out those options, and the SEC, they become like, second nature that you you're familiar with them? Well, you're going to miss shots, you're going to be having to practice a lot before you get different potential basically. Yeah,

Matt Waters: 40:14

yeah, I've kind of, I've got the, I think I'm about 70% of the way with a wide angle. And I'm still way below 50% of the way with a macro here. So you know, that's why I'm going to go into a couple of dives this week and just focus on the macro and play around with a straight positionings and the camera settings and all that kind of stuff.

Nicholas Remy: 40:38

Yeah, give them guidance would be a good place for for practising those skills. Because if you did have to position the strobes in a way that you get your subject not too much of the world around it to clear photos and all that so it's a good when you I guess when you dive in in a lovely tropical place, you go to valley for example. You don't have to position your strobe so perfectly, as long as you get some light on the subject, you're good to go. Basically, you go to Clifton gardens, while getting the light isn't just one thing and then you want to minimise how much excavator you've got and and that definitely is a good way to sharpen your skills. Definitely then doing that in Clifton gardens next time you go to bury your goodness, where tropical Galapagos and places like that you're going to take fantastic

Matt Waters: 41:20

shots. Yes, hopefully. Otherwise, it's a very expensive wasted trip.

Nicholas Remy: 41:26

If you want to double up on, you know, on the on the landings, the underwater club is coming soon. Yeah.

Matt Waters: 41:34

I'm always up for learning. I think. Even if you're a master of something new, there's always something else you're gonna learn

Nicholas Remy: 41:40

that there is an end, there's two things I've noticed not only in my way of learning, but with chatting with friends that have diverse photographers as well is when you don't practice some skills for a while. It just you know, it just just goes away. I mean, doesn't go really away. But it wears out a little bit sitter's. And I find myself even when I was learning everything by books, if let's say I was doing macro for a long time at home because there was only a macro to shoot. And then there was going on a trip where I might see Manta rays or big rugby wideangle I would go back to my book and I would relearn basically or refresh whatever I learned by you before basically nontheless trip. Yeah. And and that's one of the things I like with with the underwater club is that I think lots of people are doing, you know, infrequent diving, or infrequent in the sense that they will go in a tropical destination once in a year or twice in a year maybe. And I think having the ocean you know, to go back to your courses, go back to your learning, when you need it happening is going to be pretty, pretty handy in those cases.

Matt Waters: 42:47

So have you have you structured the delivery? How many videos are there? How many different levels? What kind of people? Is it targeting?

Nicholas Remy: 42:58

I've got in total? About 40? Lessons?

Matt Waters: 43:02

40? Yes. fucky. Now you have been busy. I've been busy.

Nicholas Remy: 43:06

40 Each of the lesson is split into smaller videos as well. Okay, so how many think more than 100? In total? Probably okay. But the reason for that is? Well, first of all underwater photography is complex and on wide topic, as you know. And the other thing is, I wanted to make sure that the you know, the videos would be the knowledge would be well, you'd be able to consume it in a bite sized format. So if you're at home, you know, after days of work, you're on your couch, you have time you want to spend one hour learning underwater photography, pop your TV open, open the Android app on your phone airplay, and you're watching the big screen, you're relaxing, yeah, but if you're on the daily commute, and you just have 10 minutes of your time, then most of the time, the subsections of a lesson are less than 10 minutes long. So there's always a time where you can spend a few minutes if you have a few minutes to spare. That's time you can spend learning or practising in the world of photography. So that's about, you know, the volume of the content. And the I guess the way I've structured it, the way that the way I've digested in pieces, in terms of structure, asked myself a lot of questions about what's the right way to present underwater photography. And I think I think that there is not one way. I think we all there's no there's various ways you can learn. Some people will start with macro, some people will go wide angle, some people will not choose a strobe or video light at all for years, because maybe they should very close to the surface. Some people well, there's various learning paths. And the way I've presented it then is to say there's an app, the lessons are presented as a map. So you're looking at a mind map basically, where you can see themes. So a theme might be wideangle. A theme might be lighting as a skill and the world lighting. Another one might be the equipment the photography equipments. And within those themes, you can see with the lessons positions on the map how they relate to each other. So for example, before you start learning about how to turn a fish ID shot into an actual portrait with character, you might want to learn how to position your strobes. And you might ask yourself, Hey, do I want to use once robot to strobes? So the residents are arranged and the mindmap in a way that tells you that you probably want to have those skills before but you don't have to, because perhaps you know, some of those things. Or you just want straight to understand what are the artistic considerations in making a portrait, as opposed to the technicalities of hey, one stroke, two strokes how to position the strobes. So I really wanted to organise it in a way that no one feels they have to go in a special order. Yeah, they see the map, the map is clickable. So you can click and have a pop up telling you, hey, this is what it is about. And then if you click you have more details about the contents in exactly what you're going to learn. You have guidance on whether you should know, this piece of information before taking this lesson to make the most of it or not. And, again, this is a freely I always say free flowing is free flowing. Yeah.

Matt Waters: 46:16

It sounds fantastic. Thank you, quite frankly, I've not seen it yet. But it sounds fantastic. I'm a very visual learner. Yeah. And that that kind of mapping, I would say, excites me over the idea of having chapter sub chapter in the least watch this, watch this, watch this

Nicholas Remy: 46:34

100% Here, I think for learners like you, I'm the same. And I think most people benefit from having a visual layout of how the concepts connect to each other, the mind map really to say, okay, because when you start, you're like, Hey, Mr. diver, I want to I want to learn photography. You don't know what you don't know. Yeah. You know, how do you know that? How would you know that? You know, there are specific skill sets and techniques and best practices in working with a model. You see beautiful photos of wreck with a model looking positioned in the right place with the leg straight and all that. If you don't know any better, you're like, well, that person must have just been taking photos of diver passing by. Absolutely not. All those good shots. They're all staged, most of them are staged. And you don't know those things if you're a beginner. But if you're starting off and you're like, okay, here is everything I can learn. Well, I'm keen for whitening, go to whitening go sounds good. As a start, you got to wait and get your light. Okay, close focus, wide angle. All right, shallow water wide angle, you can see the themes that you could get started. There was a reason for camera settings for an angle. If you just want a bit of technical guidance on the settings that would work well. And then you're like working with Moodle? Ah, there is such a thing. You have to work with the Moodle. Interesting. What is it about you go there, and then you realise that there's a hand signals. There is best practice in how the Moodle position themselves where they were, where they look, and all the things?

Matt Waters: 47:58

Yeah, yeah. I mean, ours do you think you've put into this in a year and a half.

Nicholas Remy: 48:06

The thing is, I don't think I know too much. Basically, I think I'm at 30 minutes of, of work for one minute of video. And I've got 16 hours of video in total. And that's just the beginning. Because people joining you and the workload as becoming members. We'll also have access to monthly webinars where we get together we talk about particular topic, we dive into some techniques, we exchange, we do things like that, so that there's going to be more, more, let's say more video contents. And I really want to make it something that lives for example, because the day that especially technical aspects, but not only that are going to become things are going to change. So for example, there is a course where it's all about photography equipments. So I cover basically every single bit of kit that you might find in an hour, the other photographers bag, because again, you don't know what you don't know, why would someone need to focus light? Why do they have arms? What do they need floats for and all those things. So I cover all those bits. In each and every lesson, I explain what are the specs that you find in one of the things like a stroke, for example, what are the important ones, so that you know, as a, as a consumer as a photographer, you're equipped to decide what's important when you're going to buy your stroke. And what was it what are we seeing again? Talking about equipment.

Matt Waters: 49:39

Yeah. We're talking about the the add ons, so you're gonna have the monthly webinars and stuff like that.

Nicholas Remy: 49:47

Yeah, correct. And in one of those lessons, I'm talking about cameras. So I'm going through the various types of cameras that you might use for underwater photography, your GoPro your compact with DSLR mirrorless and I'm coming Preparing them side by sides for the various, you know, let's say create area, autofocus, image quality, things like that. And I'm seeing for example, as of today for underwater photography DSLRs have an advantage over mirrorless for such and such things. But I know very well that next year, I might record the video again to say something different because the technology is catching up. Yeah. So this is a big body of knowledge, but I'm going to make it to evolve it as well over time. Yeah.

Matt Waters: 50:30

And when people go, they've got to give allowance for the advance of technology, because no one can keep up with it. It's so fucking fast. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Very interesting. So you mentioned that the underwater club is going to be a membership. So is it subscription based?

Nicholas Remy: 50:51

Yes, it's going to be a subscription base. Because I thought about different models, different ways of doing it. But I really think that as you want the knowledge to stick, as the sort of photos that you're going to take, over time, are going to change when you travel, you need to be able to go back to the knowledge and the learnings. And so that's the, that's the weight. People, they basically get access to the content, they become members, this gives gives them access to the courses. And this they become part of a community as well. So they get access to the monthly webby now. And there is also something very close to my heart as part of the underwater club that that will be for members. There is a dedicated members forum, where we exchange about photography, but I want to do it in a very specific way. I want this to be a place where we're going to give each other constructive feedback on our photography, because I think that is a massive, massive, massive way to progress. Yes. And so that that would be something very important. At the beginning, I would probably myself be doing most of the feedbacks. So today, I do it in a one to one basis, someone can hire me for a one hour two hour coaching session, we talked about underwater photography. But I think there's a lot of learning that can be had from reading a constructive critique of someone else photos by first person. So there will be that components. But I also want over time to take on board over members of the club with me to be concrete to formulate critique themselves. Yeah. Because I think even if you're, you know, very beginner in underwater photography, of course, the critique, if it's given from a place of care with respect, it's perfect. It's very useful. But you're a very experienced photographer yourself. spending the time to formulate a constructive critique onto someone else photos is also a great way to keep on learning. Yes. And I think that's, that's going to be a very beneficial, like a virtuous circle that would be taking place between members.

Matt Waters: 53:02

I think that benefit is circular as well, because a lot of people are too over critical of their own shots. Yes. So being able to critique other people's work, and then hear honest and open opinions of their work rather than Oh, that's good, man. Yes, you know, and just make you rethink and reevaluate, actually, I'm a little bit better than what I thought I was, you know,

Nicholas Remy: 53:32

yeah, it's too is too easy. When you when you get a hang on to the technicalities, to see the defects to say out, then the composition is not right. You're not exactly on the third, or it's a little bit overexposed there. Or here, there's a fish to take these cats. But look at competition winning shots, in many competitions among the top winners, you see the effects on the photos. Yeah. So in that, that's, that's the, that's the artistic sensitivity that we all have, that we can exchange when we critique each other. But when you're on your own watching your photos, you don't get those things.

Matt Waters: 54:06

So he tried to tell me that those awards that you've won, you've got defects on your photos.

Nicholas Remy: 54:11

I do sometimes.

Matt Waters: 54:12

I do. Sometimes I can say

Nicholas Remy: 54:15

I do sometimes. But I'm a bit like you I'm over critical of myself. Yeah. And there are photos where, where you know, I'm like, now, Miss, there's a fish shark tail. I've got a photo, for example, that did very well in a few contests. It's like a big school of greatness shots in southwest rocks. The lighting is great. The look of the shark, you know the layout. Everything is good, but there is one shark in the corner. Who has a tail cats with this 20 sharks in the photos. Yeah, for that reason. When I took that photo, I was like, man, you know, stop making the final case. Fortunately, I didn't delete it. And then as I was building the underwater club, and I spent nearly two yours going back into my photos because I needed to find materials to illustrate what I was teaching, basically. And I went back to our photos and I'm like, Hey, wait a minute, it still looks quite okay, this photo actually. And some friends I'm like, Okay, actually these 10 photos of sharks from Southwest rocks. They they look good, actually. Maybe not competition material, but they look really good. So I asked a few friends in a WhatsApp group. Hey, what do you think if there was one photo that stands out? What do you think this is? A few people pointed this one. And then a few others pointed over photos. And the last one I was like, Yeah, well, I'll try the other ones in competitions this year. And next year, I'll try this one that I'm still not convinced about the shark. We've got Tellarites Elia. Well, I entered it in ocean for the rest of the year. And I won first place in the conservation hope category. And I think that contest is I think it's the biggest contest in terms of ocean imagery in the world. I think. So there was like, man, okay, I can still see the defect on the photo myself. But having listen to other people telling me no, it's really good. The emotion, the emotion is excuses to defect basically.

Matt Waters: 56:09

Well, that just that just bolsters what I just said about people being over critical of their own work. And by the way, well done,

Nicholas Remy: 56:18

thank you. But there's two sides to I think there's two sides to the story about the emotion you put to your work, right? Being over critical, definitely looking at the defects because you want ideally, a shot with no defects to go to a competition and being fixated on that you forget the positive vibe of the emotion that you have in the shot. But then the other way around, is sometimes you get too emotionally attached to a shot because you struggled so hard to create that shot. You know, like that's the shot. That is the best. That's the one I'm going to enter in competitions. That's the one I'm going to pitch to magazines. That's That's the shot. And sometimes you also need that critical aid from someone else to say, yeah, it's sharp. It's called a fool. It's a great animal. But yeah, it's like, a good ad shot. Really? That's it doesn't stand out. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the wow factor. Yep. There is a photo for example, we, which and again, I can honestly tell all my love and my admiration for that photo, because it's not mine. It's a photo by Linda. We were having a fantastic dive for once in the Mediterranean Sea. In a place where the local fishermen, the local professional fisherman decided with each other. You know what, let's make it a Marine Park. Let's stop fishing in that place for 10 years and see what happens. And long story short, it was fantastic. And they decided to do it again for 10 years. So we went to the dive sites. And in the med you can see sometimes the Mediterranean Cooper, it's called the brown grouper, dusky grouper, very iconic fish from the mid atlantic because it's been over fished. It's like a puppy coming to see you in the water. So at the time, when people didn't know better, they were just bear fishing into extinction. So now you see more of them because they're they've been productive for a few years. But long story short, if I can make long story short, I'm not sure about that.

Matt Waters: 58:05

That's alright, we go all the time. And

Nicholas Remy: 58:09

we go to the to the safe sites. And at some point, I mean, that was memorable. At some points. We see two military and groupers. Two big ones, they were males, because they become males at the end of their the life as they grow. And they were doing something and never saw usually when because they must still be a fair bit of poaching happening. Even though they're protected, they tend to stay away from you. Okay, we will reverse not so much. But with regular divers, they do take the distances. In that place, though they couldn't care less about the divers, they were hammering each other for basically the two groupers they were fighting from a distance when you get the photo you you could think that they're kissing but they're certainly not the fighting head on head. And you could hear the noise in the water bang. And you could see you could see the fish scales really pop crazy action. And Lina was holding the camera that day she was taking photos I was just you know over enjoying myself pointing creatures of being a model. And when I saw the action, you never know how long it's going to last for so you have to you have to get the shots. And I saw the action I saw I was I'm like there is no way I'm going to be able to swim out before she takes the shots. She will have heard from my body in the shot. So I said okay, well what's the other option is that I go in there and I positioned myself perfectly. I make sure I look in the right place. I do all these things right. And that's what I did. So you've got a further word to groupers their head on head symmetry call centre of the frame and I'm coming in the middle, slightly sideways and they look right in the middle of the fight perfect position all that it's a perfect shot in my view and very attached to it then I'm in Alexei turret as well. But never win some competition. It never it never succeed, successes successes and and I'm not sure why some people tell me are so great. Natural History moments that she's photographed. But there's you diver here, you're spoiling the thing. And I'm like, well, there's lots of photos where with animals and the diver but I don't know something there doesn't work. Yeah, but we have so much emotional attachment. And every now and then we still enter it in a competition to see, you know that with that emotional attachment tree, you can hang it on the wall. Yes, that we can certainly do

Matt Waters: 1:00:25

that, in fact that one thing I need to do. And I've never done it. Photos I've got I've never actually, in fact, it was one of my friends here in Sydney, who he was the first dude to get one printed up. Yeah, okay. Yeah, in his apartment as first time. It's one of my photos in real life instead of digital.

Nicholas Remy: 1:00:45

How did you feel when you say it's brilliant?

Matt Waters: 1:00:47

It's great. Yeah, it's awesome. So I thought I think we need to do it.

Nicholas Remy: 1:00:51

Yeah, I think it's, it's a thing you know, you have to do, but but do it because you will feel great. And I think there's lots of, there's lots of photos that look even better in print, then even better in print than they look in real life. I have two screens at home. And when I'm pixel editing a photo, there is one screen when a photo might start to look a little bit. I don't know, noisy, doesn't look very good. In terms of details. On the other screen, it looks better. Yeah, different resolution. But then most of the time, if I print, there will be some small defects on small noise that are just smooth in the way by the printing process. Yeah. And when you're free print, you've made a good print big prints. Not going to stare at the photo from five centimetres, right? You'd be standing back, stand back and look at it. And then you're going to enjoy what you see. Yeah, yeah. Gee, I'm the worst. Interviewee I don't bring any beer. I don't bring any photo shaver.

Matt Waters: 1:01:48

Yeah, yeah, your shit.

Nicholas Remy: 1:01:52

But again, thank you for a beer afterwards, if you have time. Yeah.

Matt Waters: 1:01:56

In the meantime, I'll just drink the one beer that's left to do lovely stuff.

Nicholas Remy: 1:02:02

Got all the thinking to do, I'm just chatting and repairing and all that, oh,

Matt Waters: 1:02:05

don't worry about that. I can, it's that's the beauty of of doing a knot and not doing it live, we can just cut it out. So when people get nervous, and there's pregnant pauses, or they do this, and they move away from the microphone, we can just redo total easing slowly. So how do

Nicholas Remy: 1:02:23

you know if there's a sound issue with the easy? Is it telling us rubber? Just editing afterwards?

Matt Waters: 1:02:31

Yeah, um, what the routine that we do is, I mean, obviously, we've got the headphones on here. So I'm listening to what's going on with your microphone, and background noises like this little fan and all that kind of stuff. And I just make a mental note. And then once we've finished today, Rod, will send me the raw tracks from tomorrow. And I'll listen through to them again, while I'm working at home on a PC and pick up those little bits and pieces that I want removed. So I just note the time, and then send the data back to Rod. He takes out he does all the editing, and then balances all the noises and otters, all that magical stuff that needs to do and sends me back adds on the intro and outro and sends me back the the final edit stuff. Yeah, it's, it's quite well,

Nicholas Remy: 1:03:23

I wish I had someone helping me with the audio for all the, you know, for the lessons of recorded and then sometimes I can't remember how many times you know, um, so I'm doing that from from a study in my in our house. Yeah. In the south of Sydney. And the number of odd noises that you've got at home that you don't pick. Unless you're doing your recording sound. I told him at some point, did you hear the parents? Like no, did you hear the planes? They owe the planes? No. Did you hear the people working there? No. Did you hear the neighbour and you don't pay attention to those random noises unless you're like, I need silence here.

Matt Waters: 1:03:59

Have you? Have you? Have you created a box around your microphones so that you can kind of eliminate those? No,

Nicholas Remy: 1:04:04

because I'm, you know, I'm wearing the hoodie. Oh, you're on the rodeo. Yeah, I need to change my setup because I did this way because there will be times where I'm finding myself holding a housing and moving some straws and all that and that wouldn't be practical to have something in front of me. But in reality, the housing thing is like one every 10 lessons most of the time and talking. I'm displaying photos next to me I'm displaying talking points, but

Matt Waters: 1:04:30

you know what you could do? Have a chat with Roger. Yeah. Because at the times when you need to do something that you want to record you on messing about with gear. You could come in here and use one of these microphones here right there was plenty of space. Yeah, as we can see. I just record it. And you've got no noise on the outside.

Nicholas Remy: 1:04:50

Because he's got no the soundproofing.

Matt Waters: 1:04:53

Yeah, that's it, right like these, these boards that he's got, you know, they there's also the foam pad big ones like wavy foam. When I do recordings at home, I tend to I've got a, like a, almost like a milk crate, which I've put the foam on the inside and that that sits with a microphone coming through from the back. So the the microphone itself is completely enhanced by foam around this section where I'm tried right i right. So even with the window next to me if someone's outside and they walking past or a dog yapping at the microphone doesn't pick it up.

Nicholas Remy: 1:05:29

Great. Okay.

Matt Waters: 1:05:32

All little little tricks

Nicholas Remy: 1:05:33

or tricks? You know, I've learned, I've learned for me myself, I've done a few things I've learned Elementor and all those things. I might as well learn how to do proper sound recording.

Matt Waters: 1:05:42

Yeah, yeah. Um, so I'm scratching my ass with the Elementor. At the moment.

Nicholas Remy: 1:05:47

It should be more intuitive, right? Sometimes you're like list of bullet points, and the bullets doesn't align with the point. And you're like, that's what you do for a living man. Yeah. Why can't you do each

Matt Waters: 1:05:59

one pack of faffing about with the flex boxes and loot carousels? They're a great idea. Yeah. And so, templates. But, you know, if you make a template, it's a template, it's never going to change. You know, you can't, you can't use the same template on a different page and edit it because it's going to read it the other page as well. So I find it a bit frustrating, a bit limited, but it's certainly better than what it used to be.

Nicholas Remy: 1:06:24

And yeah, I mean, generally you do what you can you can be as beautiful pages this way. And again, I'm lucky about Weebly now, because she's a bit nerdy yourself. And there's a few situations where I'm like, he doesn't look good at all. She's like, let me let me look at it. And since a kid, she's been, you know, doing projects, like like a NAT, like a display, like stuff like that. So she's very visual in that sense. Yeah. Very artistic. And also, she's a bit nerdy. So sometimes she does custom CSS for me. The giveaway thingy, there's a carousel, which shows the prizes, like good strobes and things and masks, stuff like that. And the carousel is a is a WordPress widget, right? It's a plugin. Yeah. And those guys don't know what they're thinking. But they serve the carousel, and the images are shrink. So basically, you can see the prices and you think that's okay. They're like, Oh, yeah, willing to upgrade our software. Yeah, you should. But I'm stuck. And then I looked at the initial survey, I might be able to do some CSS, and then she did she pushed the whole thing and it looks okay,

Matt Waters: 1:07:27

brilliant. Okay, so when I get stuck, I'm going to message you and ask for the boss lady. Lovely stuff. I hate what we've gone. Oh, the giveaways. Yeah, let's let's talk about the giveaways.

Nicholas Remy: 1:07:46

So, yeah, like we said before, I'm super excited, because the underwater club is about to go live in a few weeks time. So by the end of March, people will be able to go on the underwater club.com. And they will be able to see the courses, see what's offered there and hopefully start their free trial to see what it's like and become a member. But sorry,

Matt Waters: 1:08:07

just jumping in have you start? Have you selected a particular date that it's gonna go live?

Nicholas Remy: 1:08:13

I think it's going to be most likely the 31st of March, okay. It's probably the 31st of March, okay. But if you go to the underwater club.com before, there's a little surprise there. I'm running a giveaway to celebrate the launch. And it's very simple to enter. It's a free giveaway. You don't have to purchase anything. The only thing is you have to enter your email address. join my mailing list, basically. And this way, you will get notified when the underwater flood goes live when there's events around the underwater climate fix like that. And there's quite a few nice prices for underwater photographers, at least underwater. These are things that will appeal to underwater photographers.

Matt Waters: 1:08:55

Are we allowed to say what the price is 100% yet go for it. Yeah.

Nicholas Remy: 1:08:59

So the top price of the giveaway is a wonderful premium top range rich wrap Flash Pro X stronger. So retro is a European based company. They manufacture top quality underwater strobes. So underwater flashes. And I myself have been using almost exclusively a pair of their flashes to address Flash Pro for the last two years. Most of the world's I'm winning with underwater photos have been used. I've been using these two strobes basically. And then nearly jealous of whoever is going to win the price. Because the strobe that retro is sponsoring for this giveaway is actually even better. It's the X version. So it's basically the strobe I use myself, but with an upgrade in terms of traffic, it recycles. 20% quicker. There's a few nice things like that. But the quality of light is fantastic. It's powerful. There's a range of accessories you can fit into To destroy when you want to go and get on gardens to be the new team, you can focus the light, you can do lots of things around the around the lights. So it's a fantastic store.

Matt Waters: 1:10:08

What did the retailer

Nicholas Remy: 1:10:10

didn't think it's like, nearly two grants nearly$2,000, one

Matt Waters: 1:10:14

stroller leash. So this is a giveaway.

Nicholas Remy: 1:10:18

It's a giveaway. It's for free, sign me up pretty big price.

Matt Waters: 1:10:21

So I can I put in my 15 email addresses.

Nicholas Remy: 1:10:24

You supposed to put one. But what you can do though, what you can do is you put your email, and that gives you a one entry. When free entry to the giveaway. I'm asking a little questions to whomever wants to answer about what sort of camera they're using for underwater photography. If you answer that question, you get a second entry. And then if you share the giveaway, by email, or by Facebook, you'll have your own private link with friends and you get some friends to sign up through your link. For each friend you recruit you get an extra entry. That's awesome. So if you share a few people, then you know you're a bit active with that you can raise your chances dramatically

Matt Waters: 1:10:58

on a the LinkedIn, because I've got quite a few people. Yeah,

Nicholas Remy: 1:11:02

I'm sure. So the underwater club.com. Yeah. And yeah, that's pretty much it. Okay, so that's the first price. But then the second price is. So basically with the prices, what I did is I went to potential sponsors. And I decided to approach sponsors that manufacture the gear that I use myself, because I wanted people to win things that I'm items that I'm sure are excellent for an underwater photographer. So the second prize is a pair of things. So these are the marriage 70 quadruplets? Oh yes, you know them, right.

Matt Waters: 1:11:36

That's my second set. Yep.

Nicholas Remy: 1:11:38

I think someone told me that these things. They are like, probably the most popular things. I don't know if it's on the planet. I don't want to make big statements like that. But basically, if you go to a popular dive destination, you'll see divemasters diving a lot doing 500 days a year. That's the sort of things they're using, because they're sort of rebel, right? Yeah. I love them personally, because as a photographer, I need to do flutter kick sometimes if I really want to dash through appearance, but if I go diving in Clifton garden, sort of very mucky places like that. I do frottage, so that I glide over the water and I don't stare up at the bottom and you know, waste visibility and all that. Yeah, and those things are excellent for both for both that sort of thing. So so I think they're really good. So that's the second price, then we've got a 200 euros voucher to use on a retro online shop. So if you don't get destroyed, but you still want to buy one or you want some accessories for your strobe, you can use that as well. And then we've got a mask Ameris mask, the ultra liquid skin vision masks are just super comfortable. And I Oh, that's the one I use now. And that's the first mask can use without any leak. Even if I forget to shave the previous mask if it wasn't perfectly shaved, it was a mess. And as I'm doing very, very long day for like three hours, four hours. I can't have a leaking mask. That's so uncomfortable. And this one doesn't leak. And he's very wide vision as well. So good for you know, seeing you're finding your subject, finding your whatever accessories, you've clicked on your BCD and stuff like that. Yeah. And the last price is a beautiful the underwater Club T shirt. The same I'm wearing today. Yes.

Matt Waters: 1:13:14

Very good, sir. Very good. Yeah, so everyone who's listening in feet underwater club.com. We'll repeat that we'll put in the show notes as well. Thanks. And yeah, smash that out of the park 31st of March. So you're hopefully going to be very busy from April onwards?

Nicholas Remy: 1:13:31

Yes, yes, I think so. I'll be actually travelling at the same time, because it's going to be it's going to be a busy a busy month for me, at the end of the month, I'm going to 8x in Singapore, which is the time that we're launching the underwater club as well. Okay. So but fortunately, as you know, that there's there's, there's not only me working on this Selena is going to is going to help me with administrating the sites. If, if I'm basically something at edX and yeah, then the month of April will be, will be very interesting. I can't, I can't wait to have people you know, go there, experience it. There's a trial that you can enter for free, you can start for free when the club is live, so you can access everything for seven days, without having to pay and this way you can test that my style of teaching the format of the video, the pace, everything feels right, you know, and then if you're comfortable, then you stay and then you become a member. So I was excited enough and you know, very keen to see people, you know, going through the giveaway, starting to enter put their email, ask me questions, sometimes watch the little videos that I've put there to present the prices. I can't wait to see people, you know, taking the courses interacting with them, telling me what they think. I'm also asking at the end of every lesson for feedback. So I want to keep this improving over time. So if someone You know, sees that maybe I could have delved into more details in one topic. I'm quite a detail person. But if that's the case, that can always be the case, I would love to get those feedbacks. If they weren't fully sure about something, an explanation they gave, maybe it wasn't so clear. Again, give me feedback. I want to improve it. In any ways people can interact with me as well through the underwater club will be there to help.

Matt Waters: 1:15:23

So awesome. And are you are you having a standard edX? You're here? Are you having a booth?

Nicholas Remy: 1:15:30

No, I wouldn't be just there. I would be reporting for the photo guide.

Matt Waters: 1:15:34

Oh, really? Hmm. So you're going to be doing a bit of microphone a bit or just

Nicholas Remy: 1:15:38

I think you're going to visit a few standards related to underwater photography, and check what are the news there? And we'll write an article on the way back. Okay. Yeah. And perhaps a few other things. But that's still being considered. Yeah,

Matt Waters: 1:15:53

I did get asked if I was going this year, and I just can't worry on the price. I've got too much to do. But it would have been would have been great to get in there and just have a wander around like that. AWS tech. It's great to be in a dive show. Right. And Singapore is probably one of the best ones as well,

Nicholas Remy: 1:16:09

I think so. I think so that would be my first time going. But anyways, you're going those places, too. You meet passionate people. You'll you network a little bit, you'll find out about the latest tech. The latest. I'm going to love it, I'm sure.

Matt Waters: 1:16:25

Yeah. Have you got any Putney photos into a competition? For IDEXX?

Nicholas Remy: 1:16:30

I haven't yet but I mean to the WeChat

Matt Waters: 1:16:33

effect so that they'll have a good display wall? Yeah, I think so.

Nicholas Remy: 1:16:36

And they've got some good prices as well. So yeah, definitely want to try my luck.

Matt Waters: 1:16:40

Yeah, yeah. But you don't have to enter like political competitions like Visa or anything like that anymore. You can leave that as normal people. I the rebreather that you're using, which one is it?

Nicholas Remy: 1:16:58

Are you still okay? So for many years, I've been diving exclusively with the river river. So Revo is a fully technical repeater. That's the sort of thing you can if you put some trail mix in there, you can go to 200 metres with it. Oh, that's not my thing. I'm not a very deep diver. I really use them for photography, and long dives. But for many years have been diving exclusively the Revo. And then in 2016, Revo has been acquired by Maurice. And I, being very passionate, we were very something probably just after photography is the next thing I'm passionate about. And I was thinking, hey, what's going to happen with Revo, which was kind of small company at the time. You know, it was like a side project by a Belgian entrepreneur, this guy was getting a bit older, wanting to retire, what was going to happen to river divers. And then fantastic news in the industry, Marisa quires, Rivo Marisa quiet river because they wanted to create a more recreational river, but they needed to sort of get the expertise to do that. And as a result, they came up with the horizon, which is a more recreational, semi closed river. But the thing I love about it is that there's lots of the design, the good design ideas from areevo that have been incorporated into the horizon. And now, David, you're raising as well.

Matt Waters: 1:18:20

Okay. And the horizon is a semi closed rebreather. Did you say? Yep. Okay. Do you want to explain that to folks that probably don't know too much about CCR?

Nicholas Remy: 1:18:33

Yeah, absolutely. So. So there's two types of rib river essentially, fully closed rib River, like the Revo like the inspiration like the case and those guys fully closed rib, reverse, what they do is, it's all it all comes from the fact that when you breathe, you inhale, let's say air, and in air, you will have 21 person oxygen, and the oxygen is what your body needs. That's what it metabolises. When you exhale, there's still lots of oxygen left in the gas that you're going to blow in the bubbles. Let's say if you had 21 person, that would be maybe 1716 persons left. And the concept behind the river river is to say, hey, let's not waste to 16 person and we can probably find a way to reuse them. So a closed circuit River, like the fully technical ones, what they do is they take back the guests that you've exceeded instead of leaving the bottle, go in the water, they find that, hey, you've used some of the oxygen, but then you have a pure oxygen tank on your river, that's going to replenish just what you what you've consumed a minute ago. At the same time, it's going to use some co2 filters to remove the co2 co2 which is toxic, which is part of what you're exhaling. So in summary, it cleans up the gas removes the toxic co2, and it pumps up whatever missing whatever oxygen that you have consumed would be missing otherwise Okay, so that's a closed circuit rebreather, the way it works means that there's no bubbles at all coming out of the river. And because your body really doesn't use much oxygen, much less than we probably think that we in general public probably think you can, you don't use much gas. So on my closed circuit River, out, I've got two tanks on the unit, I've got a pure oxygen three litre tank and a regular air three litre tank, the air tank is essentially just for my my wind, my BCD, my drysuits. And for adjustments of what I breathe, as I change that, that's it's the pure oxygen is what really I breathe for being able to survive in the water. And we've treated the tank, I'm able to spend six or seven hours in the water. If I'm really relaxed, in one hour of diving, whatever the depth, and we're going to consume about 20 bars of oxygen on the three litre tank. So that's the best efficiency you can get off any sort of diving apparatus and the water put up. Now it's a bit technical to use, because you need to get the gas exchangers the number the number of oxygen molecules perfectly right. As we know, if you've got too much oxygen and you run into other problems too little you get into hypoxia other problems again. So it makes closed circuit rivers, the technical ones a bit complicated to use. And some people consider them dangerous. For that reason, they do require more training and more vigilance, now comes the semi closed rivers, they work in a very, very different when sort of different principle, you still use some co2 cartridge filters. To clean the co2 out of your exaile gas, you still need that you don't want to start getting your headaches by breathing your co2 again again. So that's the same. However, you don't have to tanks, you don't need pure oxygen tank. Those pure oxygen tanks which are tricky to source depending on where you dive and all that. You just need a nitrox tank, one nitrous tank, you preempt the network's tank onto your rebreather, with what the semi close reprieve does is it will always flow some of that nitrox into your breathing loop your breathing backs. Okay, so let's say you have nitrox Vegito in the tank. As you breathe, you're going to take it down to something else, let's say nitrox 27. And if you keep breathing, you're going to take it down further, maybe nitrox, 2321, and so on. So to compensate for that your rebreather is going to keep injecting bubbles of the netwrix 32 from the tank. So in a way of a semi closed River, your breathing keeps pulling down the percentage of oxygen. But your river keeps on pushing nitrox on the tank to push it up, push it back up. So that sort of compensate each other. But generally speaking, you've got let's say if you're breathing, if your tank is 32, natural 32%, you might be breathing only 2726 28, something like that, as a result of this process where the semi closed river always pushed some gas. It pushes more than what you need. So at some point, that rebreather is full of gas, it's actually always full of gas. So you've got a few bubbles coming out from the back of the river. So that's the difference with a closed circuit rebreather, you do have some bubbles coming back. But there's very few and in that sense, you still have the advantage of getting closer to wildlife. And it's much safer because you don't depending on the rebreather design, of course, yet the risk of going to hypoxia hypercapnia or hyperoxia is nonexistence.

Matt Waters: 1:23:47

And what's your bottom times like on the semi close then in comparison to the full CCR?

Nicholas Remy: 1:23:52

So that depends very depends more on depth, and on and on the size of the tank. So my longest dive on the CCR was four hours 30 minutes, and I still have plenty of gas and my tanks. So it was more a case of I had it was dinnertime I had to go to go out here. That was the reason. Lovely Dave Heather was with the sea dragons in Adelaide by the way, nice, lovely place lovely dive anyways, with the semi closed with the horizon and diving now. It basically depends how much how close you want the, the guests that you're breathing to be to what you have in the tank. So if you have nitrox 32 in the tank, and you say hey, I really want to breathe at least 28 It's going to use lots of bubbles to keep you that up. If you say that's fine, I'm going pretty shallow. I'm happy with nitrox. 25 then there's going to be very few bubbles going there to give you that 25 So long story short if I'm sure diving in Sydney, which is between five to 20 metres depth most of the time out of a seven litre steel tank. I can do three hours in your house on the river. Nice. It's pretty good.

Matt Waters: 1:25:12

Yeah. And retail wise. What's the difference in price between the two units?

Nicholas Remy: 1:25:19

It's run Yeah, roughly okay. So for the marathon instant I know best. The Revo I think brand new might cost you up to 15 grands. Now, if you take all the options, there are options there, but the one that you dive would be new 15 runs the horizon. I think this is seven to eight grand, something like that. Okay, so it's meant to be much more affordable. Yeah, an interesting thing as well is because Marius is really going full on with this river. They're really this is something they believe in and they're making all efforts to try and make it something that you know, spreads and gets lots of support. There's quite a few dev shops now within Australia that have signed up for for being part of the horizon dealership basically. And as a result, if I was flying to Brisbane to go diving on Straddie which is a fantastic place by the wait for Manta rays don't have to go to Maldives. There they are in there in Brisbane, basically, there's a dead centre there, they do reverse they do arise and and I can rent a river from there from them. I can rent horizon, the left to travel with mine.

Matt Waters: 1:26:25

Right? Perfect. Yeah, that makes sense. When's your next trip? Check star triple away?

Nicholas Remy: 1:26:32

Um, I haven't planned it actually. I mean, 8x is just going to be the show and meeting people. The thing is, I'm very, very fortunate to say that I'm going to become an Australian citizen soon.

Matt Waters: 1:26:43

Hey, congratulations. Thank

Nicholas Remy: 1:26:45

you. I'm so happy. I'm so excited. And the kids as well. But the thing is, we don't know yet when he's going to be the ceremony, the citizenship or you pledge allegiance, your loyalty to Australia and all that. Yeah. And I think once I have the ceremony, that will be a few weeks for me to wait to get the passport. Yeah, until I have the passport. I cannot go out of Australia because otherwise I cannot come back.

Matt Waters: 1:27:06

Really? Yeah. But your piano though you're on permanent residency. Now.

Nicholas Remy: 1:27:10

I am. But from the time I become a citizen, even if I don't have a passport yet, I cannot have a PR visa anymore, because I'm a citizen. So I cannot go back into the country harsh.

Matt Waters: 1:27:21

Because I'm a little way behind you. Were just a PR, but probably 18 months, maybe a bit more behind you. It's gonna be a couple of years before I get my citizenship and blue passport. But I didn't know that. But

Nicholas Remy: 1:27:35

yeah, I think about the day there will be a few months where you can't really go out of the country. I mean, you will visit when they booked my trip to edX. I was I was taking the risk because normally they give you an email one month before the actual ceremony. And I booked IDEXX five weeks before it was like, gee, if in the next seven days, they tell me that's your ceremony, whatever you do, but they haven't saw should be fine. But yeah, long story short, I'm not going to book any overseas trip in the next few weeks.

Matt Waters: 1:28:03

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Huh? Hey, let's get these questions out. Yeah, it was me. I've got to put my glasses on. That's one of the big things. I mean, you mentioned that earlier on, you've got to have like both I've got a bifocal lens in your mask. To wear glasses.

Nicholas Remy: 1:28:28

No, no. Linna used to need analysis, but she and she and she had it at some point.

Matt Waters: 1:28:33

Did she get laser surgery and shit like that? Yeah. See, I'm I'm I can't remember which way around it is long side short sighted, whatever it is. I need reading glasses. Like these things. So I've been told by the optician that it's not operable. Right. So it's kind of tough shit Matt, you're going to you're going to grin and bear it. So I ended up getting I got a prescription lens from AWS Bob, big shout out to him. He's just up in mono Val optician there and got the bifocal lenses in and it's it's good. But your eyes continue to deteriorate further for the first two to five years. Right so now it's I've had the lenses for a year. I think I might have to get some more so it's another another sting in the pocket. And it's torture as well because I used to be really good with the eyes. So take a macro Yep, was a piece of piss. Yeah, now I've not only got to manhandle the camera but kind of move the head to get focused

Nicholas Remy: 1:29:40

on the lenses on the when you're watching something close, right? Yeah, yeah,

Matt Waters: 1:29:45

that's why wide angle I'm taking my wide angle shots at the moment because they're easier to do for me,

Nicholas Remy: 1:29:49

but you know what, what you what you might be able to do with your with your camera. What's your housing brand? Ikelite Yep. What you might be able to do is get from a callate a an angled viewfinder. Yeah, that has optical correction built in. Yeah. And if that's not the case, I think that you can do one that you might be able to fit there.