A Serene Shooting Gallery

Jim Hazen was in 30 feet of water off Laguna Beach when he snapped his prize-winning picture. There was a big grouper surrounded by a bunch of garibaldi and he was trying to get a group shot, but one of the garibaldi kept getting in the way.

“He kept coming in real close and attacking my camera,” recalls Hazen. “Finally I got mad and said, fine, here . . . and clicked. I blinded him and he swam around dazed.”

That’s how Hazen, a 35-year-old software engineer from Aliso Viejo, won the award for the year’s best novice photographer in the Orange County Underwater Photographic Society. “I was surprised,” Hazen said later. “Sometimes when you’re not really trying, you get your best shot.”

Thousands of Californians will shoot millions of pictures this summer. They will photograph the flowing waterfalls of Yosemite and the giant redwoods of Sequoia. Some will climb atop the highest peaks of the High Sierra to point their cameras into the sweeping green valleys below. A few will don scuba tanks and take their cameras into a natural marine wilderness filled with more color and wonder than most humans can imagine.

They are Orange County’s underwater photographers, a band of hardy adventurers who brave year-round cold water and El Nino conditions to frame some of the most gorgeous photos you will ever see.

“I love the ocean and this is a way of capturing what’s down there and bringing it up top,” said Ron Gellis, 49, an Irvine psychologist who has been shooting pictures underwater for about a year. “It’s a form of meditation, like being in touch with God.”

Linda Blanchard, lab director at the Orange County Marine Institute and an experienced underwater photographer, agrees. “The ocean is changing,” she says. “People don’t want to shoot fish anymore, so they shoot pictures instead. Photography gets you down there, gets you looking at things with a different eye and poses a major challenge.”

Blanchard is president of an organization that helps its 36 members meet that challenge. It’s called the Orange County Underwater Photographic Society, and one of its monthly meetings is a thing to behold. “We want to do a wreck dive and a shark dive, anyone interested?” a member announces.

Five people raise their hands. “That’s what we do to new members,” somebody else quips.

This is patterns and textures night at the Orangewood Academy in Garden Grove, where the organization meets. Every month, the group sponsors a themed competition--past contests have featured pictures of squid, starfish, jellyfish and colors such as red, white and blue.

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Tonight, club members are being treated to an array of slides showing underwater designs they have seen and photographed. There is a close-up of a blue-and-gold nudibranch taken off Catalina Island. A shot of live coral in the Caribbean reveals an artist’s pallet of intersecting lines. And a portrait of a sea anemone in tropical waters looks like an abstract painting by Van Gogh.

“I love nature and this is my form of self expression,” says Kelly Bracken, who eventually wins in the advanced category for a shot she took in New Guinea. Winners, determined by the vote of fellow club members, receive points that are tallied at the end of the year. Those receiving the most points in each of three categories are awarded plaques. “Whenever I get in the water,” says Bracken, 38, “I get in the water with my camera.”

Underwater cameras--specifically a throwaway that will take you down to 10 feet--can be purchased for as little as $13, according to Alan Broder, owner of A B Sea Photo, a popular underwater photo shop in Los Angeles. “That will enable you to prove that you saw something, but that’s about it,” he says. At the other extreme, you can spend more than $10,000 for a professional-quality, 35-mm underwater unit complete with extra lenses and strobes. For most divers serious about taking pictures underwater, Broder says, an initial investment of $1,300 to $3,500 will buy a camera and flash unit capable of feeding the habit.

“More and more divers are taking up photography because it’s easier on the environment and they are conscious of the sea’s diminishing resources,” Broder says. “People are choosing photography because they would rather take home a picture than a carcass, and Southern California is one of the underwater photographic meccas of the world.”

Classes can be taken through dive shops and some universities. And the Orange County Underwater Photographic Society regularly offers workshops, speakers and, of course, the advice of experienced members who have photographed underwater vistas all over the world from Laguna Beach or the Channel Islands to Fiji, the Bahamas and Cayman Islands.

In the end, though, what it comes down to is this: a diver alone with a camera, facing a vision so breathtakingly beautiful that it just has to be preserved. It was that way for Hazen the day he grabbed the shot of that garibaldi, the big distinctive golden creature from out of your dreams that many consider California’s unofficial state fish.

“It’s my signature picture so far,” he says of the resulting photo. “People see that picture and they know that it’s mine.”

Michael Thompson was similarly motivated the day he and two buddies went diving off Corona del Mar. Just south of the breakwater, about 20 feet deep, they came across a Spanish Shawl nudibranch, a lovely purple and yellow-plumed creature resembling a tiny snail.

“The surge was pushing me forward and pulling me back,” he recalls, “but I was able to get three or four shots. One of them turned out perfect.”

For more information about the Orange County Underwater Photographic Society call club President Linda Blanchard at (949) 443-2274.