We just got the scoop on this fabulous little dome, here goes:
Jürgen (otherwise known as Yogi) and Stella Freund are currently with us at Sorido Bay resort in the Raja Ampat, their 18 month WWF expedition in full swing
http://blogs.panda.org/coral_triangle/, and they came bearing not only the new miniature Seacam dome, but the full story of how this ‘YOGI Dome’ came about:
THE YOGI DOME by Stella Freund:Yogi, or professionally known as Jürgen Freund was a mechanical engineer before he became a full-time nature photographer. He created many gadgets like lenses, domes, underwater housings etc. for his cameras. He had creative images in his mind and experimented a lot to get the imagined shot done. One of them was a macro-wide angle lens and later on, a mini dome.
Some 25 years ago, he made a macro-wide lens for his Nikonos 3. There was a Tauchen Magazine shoot-out in Cuba, made up of all German amateur underwater photographers. He had his weird looking Nikonos during this shoot-out and everyone saw what he was doing, what he was shooting.
When he submitted his pictures, he was accused of sandwiching two slides to make the macro-wide single slide picture (A super imposition of 2 images as one).
Of course this was not the case as it was a true single image. But still he didn't win anything. It was too early a concept for anyone to believe was the real thing. So through the years, he just did his own thing and never minded what other people thought.
For many years, his film macro-wide pictures came out in many underwater magazines, particularly in the Sulu Sulawesi Seas book which we produced for WWF Philippines in 2001.
Harald Hordosch, owner of Seacam, is a dear friend who we are lucky enough to have come visit us in Cairns, Far North Queensland for his vacation every now and then. He had a big hand in convincing Yogi it was time to shift from film to digital about 5 years ago when the Nikon D200 just came out. He and Yogi would simply talk for hours on end – creatively, and in engineering parlance. They've known each other a long time (more than 15 years) from when Harald started with Seacam. Yogi remembers the time when Harald would go to the Boot Show (Duesseldorf) with raw fingers, with aluminum dust still under his fingernails, straight from his workshop.
Some 4 years ago, Harald visited Cairns again. Yogi and Harald had a boy’s day out in our backyard from morning to night. They were like kids playing with their toys. Yogi brought out all his cameras, all his underwater housings, some he made from Plexiglas and the D200 Seacam housing. The calipers were out, the table was full of measuring tools and odd bits that engineers use, and white paper and pens for Harald to scribble on. Then Yogi's self made mini dome came out. Yogi by now was already well known for his macro-wide shots. He also knew he couldn't keep his secret under lock and key forever and so he showed his creation to Harald. Yogi asked Harald if he could make a glass version of his plastic mini-dome for him. So bringing back to Austria's Yogi's plastic mini-dome, Harald found a way to nicely encase the raw plastic dome material in the slick Seacam way and sent it back to us. In the meantime, he had his suppliers working, and has now manufactured a glass version. We got the first prototype of what I call "The Yogi Dome" in time for the beginning of our WWF Coral Triangle Photographic Expedition. It works perfectly and when the subject is right, makes simply excellent macro-wide angle pictures which are now shown on Harald's website under Jürgen Freund starting with the mushroom coral on the sandy bottom -
http://seacam.com/de/produkte/frontports/s...ports/beispieleThe Freunds, collectively known as freundfactory, have been commissioned by the environmental organization WWF to swing through five of the six countries in the Coral Triangle, and bring this hotbed of marine biodiversity to the attention of the world. Last May, the couple embarked on a projected 18-month expedition that has taken them to the Philippines and Malaysia; they are currently scouring the waters of Raja Ampat Ampat, Indonesia, and are headed next to the Solomon Islands. It’s a trip that has so far taken them from beachside huts to five-star live-aboards and resorts and from tiny fishing villages to million-dollar live reef fish operations…
You can follow their ongoing blog on the WWF website, or click here:
http://blogs.panda.org/coral_triangle/ .
