Page 20 - Q01-2021 Fins Magazine

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by JEFF WEINER | PATRICIA PASTRANO
Brett Stanley has made his underwater
portraiture into an art form. He will go to
extraordinary lengths to create his images,
including building complete underwater sets. We
interviewed Brett and found him to be relaxed
and easy-going.
JW
Alright, so first question. How long have you
been doing this?
Brett S
So I’ve been a photographer for probably about
12-14 years, but I’ve been doing underwater
almost exclusively for about seven or eight of
those.
Pat P
What made you want to focus on underwater
photography?
Brett Stanley
I just love the underwater, so being underwater
is my happy place. It’s where I feel the most
calm and the most at peace. My brain tends
to be kind of like a hummingbird. As soon as
I go underwater, I become totally focused and
everything else kind of just disappears. For me
going underwater was a kind of a no brainer.
Taking my photography with me just made it
so much nicer to be down there and gave me a
reason to be underwater.
It was probably like seven or eight years ago
that I first tried underwater photography as
underwater portraiture. I have been doing
underwater photography since I was a kid. I
loved to dive. I would take pictures of fish, which,
quickly I found to be extremely boring. Taking
people under the water and doing what I do in
the studio, is what I call underwater portraiture.
The underwater studio work is what I have been
doing for about seven or eight years. The reason
I did that in the first place was I felt like I needed
to find something.
I felt as a photographer, I was always kind of
chasing someone else’s work. I was not finding
my own voice, if you know what I mean. And so,
when I finally went underwater with a camera
and found a way to do the images that I saw
in my head, that’s when I started to become
obsessed and felt like I had found my place.
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JW
Brett you create sets underwater, so
underwater portraiture. But it’s really more than
that too. Because in looking at these photos,
there is one here you you’ve set up a whole
graveyard with tombstones and the model is
painted.
Brett S
Yeah, she’s been body painted. She was
painted by an amazing body painter, Lana
Chromium. Milynn Sarley is an amazing
underwater model. And to be honest, I kind of
did see this image in my head because it’s kind
of a homage to Beetlejuice.
I wanted to do a kind of Halloween set, so I
went to all the Home Depot’s here and all the
Michael’s and bought up as many props that
I thought would sink as I could. And then I
spoke to Milynn and asked her what outfits she
had. And she said, ‘You know what? I’ve got
a BeetleJuice outfit. Who’s the main character
from Beetlejuice?‘ And it all just kind of came
together. So this is my homage of Beetlejuice’s
graveyard from the movie.
Pat P
The image just stops you in your tracks. Like,
from a photography aspect, what were you
thinking? It’s amazing.
JW
Do you have a vision board or maybe some pre
comps before you shoot?
Brett S
Not often. No. I tend to shoot by the seat of my
pants, a lot of times just throw a whole bunch
of crap in a pool and then kind of make it work.
When I build sets, I build walls and a floor
and a door and windows and all that sort of
stuff. Yeah, I kind of do previsualize this sort
of thing because I want to know what I’m
going to make beforehand. I use a program
called SketchUp, which is a 3D rendering
program, to get an idea of the size of things
and where things are going to go. Outside of
that everything else just kind of happens on the
day. The way it’s lit, the way the props are and
all that sort of stuff a lot of it just happens once
we get underwater.
I had a beautiful Baroque chair I that I loved.
That chair is very dear chair to me, it is 21