UNDER-SEA PHOTOGRAPHY 163 



the more time it takes, while distance takes less time 

 than near-by objects. Under sea it was just the re- 

 verse. Everything in the distance faded off into 

 darkness. 



I could develop only tests in the small hot dark- 

 room I had, but I did it every day after a dive till I 

 got the correct exposure, to get the correct focus. I 

 measured the distance of a large mass of coral care- 

 fully; it was ten feet. I took my first picture at scale 

 15, then 121064 feet, developed them, and in 

 later work used the ratio of the sharpest one to the 

 scale on the camera. By the time I learned these 

 points I was an expert diver. I could move the 

 anchors of the launch, go anywhere I pleased and 

 enjoy it immensely. 



Three hours under sea was enough for a day. In 

 fact three hours at any kind of work in that tropic 

 country was all it was wise to do, changing to some- 

 thing entirely different for the rest of the day. So 

 during the afternoon I would work in the laboratory 

 or in my aquarium on material gathered in my 

 dives. I seldom came home without considerable 

 quantities of coral and shellfish, and my plankton 

 net gave me a host of the small forms of plant or 

 animal life to picture under the microscope. So the 

 time allotted to the Samoans passed all too quickly. 

 On a trip of this sort you are doing a special new 



