What Keeps You Diving? – Sandra Stalker

Next in our series of ‘What keeps you diving?’ is local award winning photographer Sandra Stalker.

Sandra has spent many years diving the Dorset coastline and capturing the magic through her lens.

How did I start diving?

I moved to Weymouth after I graduated from my illustration degree back in 1997, I had always wanted to live by the sea having grown up in forces landlocked Germany. In 1999 I decided I wanted to learn to dive so enrolled on my PADI open water in a very stormy September of that year. My first dive was off a ropey looking rib called the black pig and was on the dredger just outside Portland harbor. It wasn’t quite like the tropical seas of the PADI videos, the viz was probably about 50cm at best but I was hooked! I spent the next 5 years or so diving most of the local wrecks as part of a Portland based dive club, millennium divers Dorset. In 2000 I met Ryan and we also started shore diving together, until that point I had only ever boat dived but it opened my eyes to the freedom and flexibility of shore diving

What keeps me diving?

Around 2005 I got my first underwater camera, an époque instamatic film camera that was pretty ill suited to UK viz as it required you to be about 1m away from your subject as a minimum. I then bought my first digital camera and underwater housing (much more suited to the UK viz) and was immediately hooked on macro, wanting to share the amazing creatures we have on our local shores, lots of which people don’t even know exist. I’m a bit of nudibranch spotter (like a train spotter but far less glamorous) and after being shown my first bright yellow nudibranch off Chesil beach by Ryan I was totally in love with these tiny colourful beasties and still feel a thrill of excitement when I come across a species I’ve not seen before.

Around 2019 we really started to push our underwater photography, we started to enter competitions and really enjoy finding new ways to photograph our local subjects to promote our fabulous underwater habitats and life that we have locally. I think this has brought an added excitement to our diving, the amazing thing about diving here is that there are no guides to spot things for you or queues of divers waiting to photograph the same subjects. Its like a treasure hunt each dive, never knowing what you are going to find and its incredibly exciting.

These days we primarily shore dive around the Dorset (mostly Portland) coast. We dive all year round as there is always something to see even in the depths of winter. Its easy, cheap and on our doorstep and filled with a colourful fiesta of fabulous creatures just waiting to be discovered and have their photographs taken. We are always looking for new places in the area to shore dive as you never know what treasures are waiting there.

To keep up to date with Sandra’s latest explorations make sure to check out hers and Ryan’s websites:

https://temperatewaters.co.uk

Ryan & Sandra Stalker Underwater Photography – A showcase of Underwater Images