We asked Laurent Ballesta, underwater photographer featured in Habitats, on his experience shooting The Big Blue. 

Habitats

Why did you become a photographer?

I grew up by the Mediterranean Sea, so at an early age I started snorkeling with my younger brother and we played like if we were underwater explorers when my parents (who didn’t know how to swim) were laying at the beach. I followed Cousteau’s series pretending I was one of his divers.

When I was 13 years old, I started scuba diving… and underwater photography came just after as I felt the need to show my family and friends (no divers at all!) all those things to be seen down there, as they doubted my “incredible” stories. So, at the beginning it was just to prove my stories, then it was the naive and impossible wish to collect pictures of all the living-being, all the fishes, all the crabs, all the algae, everything! Later on, it evolved into another kind of need:  to bring back to the surface images that reflect “how huge is the deep seascape” and “how mysterious is underwater life”.

What's the most dangerous or exciting encounter you've had doing photography?

My meeting with the primitive-looking coelacanth, thought to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. More than a living fossil, this fish known as “Gombessa” remains the only link, still alive in modern time, connecting fish to land animals.

Together with my team, I went diving to over 120 meters deep in search of this mythical fish. We photographed, filmed and conducted scientific studies on a living coelacanth, all protocols and aims were made by divers for the first time. As a tribute to this legendary fish, I named my expeditions “Gombessa” as they respect the 3 emblematic values that characterized this expedition: a scientific study, a diving challenge, and unprecedented images.

What was your favourite habitat to shoot it?


I don’t believe I have a favourite habitat. I try to show, as much as I can, the mysteries of deep-sea universes. After all, this is what moves me to take diving risks, to push the limits of the discipline and I wonder if this is another way, less practiced, to mark minds: open a small window, for a brief moment, on what is beyond us, on what we do not understand.

I believe that the feeling of measuring the unknown can create more respect than the simple contemplation of beauty. I even believe that the beauty of nature has become a consumption object and no longer a source of respect. On the contrary, what is beyond us, what impresses us, even when it scares us a little, will always remain a source of respect, which can further enhance humility, or at least, I believe so.

Thumnail image:  © Andromede Oceanology / Gombessa Expeditions.