Under the Surface Inside the work of ocean photographer Renee Capozzola, who’s saving the turtles and defending the sharks one shutter click at a time WRITTEN BY
Savannah Howe
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n the balmy waters of the South Pacific, marine conservationist, ocean photographer, and diver Renee Capozzola drifts gently through the blue. She’s waiting for something to cross her path, whether it be ambling sharks, sage sea turtles, or even a looming whale. Life in the ocean, after all, is always just around the corner—or rather, just around the coral fringe. In September, Capozzola was honored with the first ever Female Fifty Fathoms (FFF) Award, a distinction created by a recent partnership among Oceanographic Magazine, organizers of the Ocean Photography Awards, and Swiss luxury watch manufacturer Blancpain. Capozzola was chosen out of 100 nominees as the female photographer who best embodies hope and inspiration in marine conservation. The shutterbug wasn’t always capturing our finned neighbors, but the ocean holds a treasured place in Capozzola’s
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heart. A So-Cal native, Capozzola was plenty used to sand between her toes when her parents started taking her to Hawaii on work trips. Capozzola fell in love with the archipelago’s luscious green ecosystems, but she didn’t officially don scuba gear until a 2004 trip to Maui. Despite her growing interest in diving, Capozzola still hadn’t picked up a camera. That came later, when the diver wanted to share what she was experiencing with others. A longtime artist, she knew plenty about color and composition, but she needed hours of research, reading, and picking experts’ brains to teach herself the technical aspects of photography. “It was more of a casual hobby at first, to take pictures and share them with my family and friends,” Capozzola said, recalling how she used to take images with the simplest of setups: a compact point-and-shoot, no fancy flashes or lenses. “[I wanted] to show them what I was seeing AMERI CAN ESSE NCE
