Freediving is diving on a single breath. A dangerous extreme sport. But, also, the great way to understand yourself and others, to be more relaxed and knowledgeable, to nurture and expand the love to water, sea, ocean and every living form in it.

There are some very important rules in the freediving world. If you will follow them (and, of course, you are generally healthy person) – you will be safe. If you will think you are so skilled and experienced that you may skip some of them… well, the sea is more experienced anyway and may show it suddenly. So, the first and the most important rule is “never dive alone”. There always must be someone watching and supporting you, capable to pull you out from your own personal depth. That’s why freedivers are always dive in a group, mostly along the rope, gradually and slowly increasing their personal depth day by day.

This gallery contains underwater images of Russian freedivers with monofins, swiming along the corals, along the rope, into the depth by breaststroke, etc. Most of the images are taken at the very famous Egypt place called “The Blue Hole” – a deep 100-meter hole in a coral reef near Dahab town. The Blue Hole has its own unique atmosphere… attractive and somewhat scare. Maybe, it reflects the ocean itself – attractive and scare simultaneously. But for me personally the most scary moment is when you reach the depth you never been before and see how light, seen through water, disappeared little by little…

From the photography point of view there are some essential differences between general and underwater photography. Safety is the first: if you personal best depth is, let’s say, 50 meters, you could not dive so deep with the camera in hand. You should consider less depth to be safe – no more than 15 meters in the same example. Second, the water steals colors. Red is almost gone at 1 meter, others are following. So, if you would like to have rich colors underwater – use flash lights or take photos in the shallow depth. Third, in our freediving world models are in a constant motion. I need to use high shutter speed and high ISO to freeze that motion and balance the overall brightness, clarity and noise. Forth, the closer you to the subject, the clearer photo will be. That’s why in the underwater photography wide-angle lenses are usually used.

Anyway, despite the fact that freediving is an extreme dangerous sport, it could train you to be more relaxed, friendly, healthy and to love our home planet and their oceans even more.