Ismaili.NET - Heritage F.I.E.L.D.

DUBAI: The Swiss-born photographer talks about his underwater photograph from 2014, which was displayed at Florida's Palm Beach Show, via Galerie Gmurzynska, from Feb. 16-21.

I'm entirely self-taught, I just picked up a camera at some point and loved it. I've always loved wildlife photography; I’d buy books on it and watch David Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau documentaries when I was younger. I'm living the dream I had as a kid.  

I'm not interested in just taking photographs for photographs' sake. I'm really into wildlife and the environment, and trying to help them. I've kept animals at home since I was eight. I think I know animals better than most people.

Giraffes and koalas are now endangered — animals that you and I never would have imagined 20 years ago would be endangered. For me, part of what I’m doing is just recording what we're losing. 

What's always important for me is the animals themselves, and some animals are much more curious and interactive than others. I've had turtles stay with me for 45 minutes and I've had whale calves lock eyes with me. 

I took this photograph in Sataya, Egypt. I was running out of breath. I went below the surface a bit and this dolphin was rising up to my feet. My camera wasn't working. Finally, he was at my chest and the camera still didn't shoot. He went just above me and I looked up, arched my back, and I clicked. It worked. I had zero air left in my lungs.

Swimming back to the boat, I was 100-percent sure that I'd missed it. The fact that I got the whole face and the eye is really fantastic. It was some sort of serendipity — having a camera that didn’t seem to work and all of a sudden it worked with a really beautiful animal. 

You know what I see in the picture? I see the scratch marks and I don't know if they’re from mating or rubbing itself on coral. One of the marks looks like a barcode in a supermarket. I love the image, but I always look at the barcode and think how funny it is.