Awaken: Reaching for Life | Black & White Underwater Photograph, Limited Edition Ocean Fine Art

“How One Dive and One Simple Subject Changed the Way a Scuba Diver Sees the World”

Awaken: Reaching for Life

When I slip beneath the surface of the Pacific, everything changes. The roar of the world above is muted. The sway of the kelp forest moving with the ocean’s currents becomes almost hypnotic. I become calm and part of something much larger than myself.

Off the California coast, there are many places to find kelp forests. Over the years, I’ve spent countless dives drifting through them, surrounded by their quiet grace.

And I know them almost by heart. The rough textures of the leaves, the way sunlight filters through their canopies, and the gentle tug of the current that makes the whole forest like it was alive.

In fact, I became so familiar with the kelp forests that I started growing bored of these dives and began taking them for granted. On this day, a friend of mine suggested we make our next dive with the specific intention to “see” the scene differently. So, instead of trying to photograph the kelp forest as a whole, I put on my macro lens and jumped back in the water. 

It took me a minute to adjust what I was looking for. But before long, there was one important part of the underwater forest I immediately realized I had been looking past all these years. The kelp bladders! Those are the little round air-filled sacs that give the giant kelp its buoyancy. They help it float high up the water column toward the sunlight. I’d seen them on every dive, brushed past them without much thought, stepped on them at the beach, and never once considered their quiet significance.

Until one day, I decided to stop and really look. This day was the start of a multi-year-long transformation of how I awakened to view not just those around me, but the world as a whole in an entirely new way. In that moment, I realized seeing things differently was as easy as making the conscious decision to do so.

Seeing the Familiar in a New Way

That was the moment Awaken was born. I wanted to photograph something I knew so well that it had almost become invisible to me, and reveal it in a way that felt new and extraordinary.

We do this in our daily lives, too, don’t we? Walk past the same trees on our street. Drink from the same coffee mug. Hear the same birdsong. Interact with the same people. And because these things are always there, we forget how beautiful they are. We forget how they support us, sustain us, and remind us that life is a series of quiet miracles.

For me, the kelp bladders are a perfect symbol of this truth. They are small, ordinary, and often overlooked, yet they hold up entire ecosystems. Without them, the forests would sink. With them, the kelp stretches skyward toward the sun, offering shelter, oxygen, and nourishment to countless creatures.

They remind me that sometimes the most unassuming details are the ones that carry the greatest strength.

Themes and Emotions of the Art

Awaken: Reaching for Life is about calm, intimacy, and timelessness. By removing color, the eye is drawn to the play of light and shadow. The image holds the inner stillness of being underwater, when all you hear is the steady sound of your own breathing. 

It also peaks curiosity, turning the familiar into something mysterious. And reminds us that even the smallest details are important threads in the fabric of nature. 

The air-filled sacs that rise toward the surface, carry a message of resilience and hope. At its heart, this artwork is about the choice to look again, to notice what we might otherwise pass by, and to discover the extraordinary within the ordinary.

What Makes This Artwork Unique

Many photographs capture the wide views of these underwater forests. Not many honor their small details. 

Awaken: Reaching for Life shifts the gaze, offering the often-overlooked kelp bladders as elegant, sculptural forms. Shown in black and white, their expected colors dissolve into pure geometry and light, revealing a scene that feels both organic and eternal. 

What might once be dismissed as common, transformed by perspective, becomes almost otherworldly. The piece embodies buoyancy and persistence with its forms rising faithfully toward the sun. It invites the viewer to slow down, to see differently, and to recognize the beauty hidden in life’s most unassuming places.

An Invitation to Awaken

This artwork is intended to be a reminder to not take the little things for granted. Whether these things are in nature, our homes, jobs, or even in our relationships. We must remember that sometimes the most profound beauty is hiding in plain sight. These little things are waiting for us to pause, to look again, and to awaken to what's really there.

I invite you to welcome Awaken: Reaching for Life into your home, not just as artwork, but as a daily reminder of your own buoyancy and resilience, as well as the quiet strength of nature. 

May it remind you, every time you see it, to remain awakened and to keep reaching for your own light.