My first underwater images | Dive Trip to Hemmoor, Germany
Just yesterday, we came back from a short two nights trip to the Hemmoor lake in Lower Saxony, a little more than an hour´s drive from Bremen (if you drive slowly and way too far before noticing, you may need two like we did :-P ). I was really looking forward to these diving days – a great time with the boys plus diving plus finallllllly testing my new underwater housing by BS Kinetics for my Nikon D7100.
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The Hemmoor chalk coal lake
The Chalk lake Hemmoor resulted from 117 years of chalk coal extraction and cement production. Until 1976 chalk was mined here and processed to cement in a factory right at the pit. After it was abandoned, it eventually filled with groundwater, and today the remaining 33 Hectar Lake is with its 60m depth the third deepest lake in northern Germany. You can find a dive base, where you can rent gear, fill your bottles and get other information you need. This is an exclusive diving lake, and especially for that purpose, several attractions have been installed underwater like a sailboat, a plane, a shark, a truck and a car. The remains of the chalk extraction industry make pretty interesting diving destinations, too. Around 30.000 divers visit this lake every year.
The Perseids are coming down
Nuri and Jens dive in a local diving club and had been here before, Stefan and I were about to lose our lake water diving virginity. We drove Wednesday night to experience the Perseids shower, an astronomical event where dozens of shooting stars could be observed. Armed with a couple of beers and some speakers, we spent quite a long time sitting at the lake, having good talks, dancing and watching the sky. Indeed, we discovered quite a few and definitely the biggest shooting stars I have ever seen. So many wishes are waiting to become true ;)
Testing my underwater housing and losing my freshwater virginity
[su_dropcap]T[/su_dropcap]he following day we started off with our first dive around one. The weather was awesome, sunny and hot, something we are really not spoilt with in Bremen. Nevertheless, the water was cold here, so the diving equipment has to be adjusted accordingly. Other than in all my dives so far, it was compulsory here to dive with two separate stages, which is common practice in cold water. If one stage fails (e.g. due to freezing), there is
another one you can rely on. Not to speak of the wetsuit (or better dry suit). My 5mm was way too cold, so I had a 7mm plus an Ice West of 5mm. Also, gloves and, of course, a hood (later, I also added some ordinary socks since my feet really got cold). The water was around 17 degrees in the shallow areas and goes down to eight if you go really deep. Not only was I excited about this new experience, but on top of that, this was a very important moment in my life: for the first time, I would be diving with my DSLR. As my BS Kinetics housing is brand new, I first wanted to take it with me on the dive without my camera in it – just in case of something got damaged during postage. Luckily it all went well and was actually pretty bizarre – the empty housing had an extremely positive buoyancy and keep on trying to pop up during the whole time. The dive itself was really cool; we went along a former street towards a small sailboat of a few meters in length. At around nine or ten meters, the water temperature dropped significantly as we passed the thermocline, and here at 16m, I felt really cold (here we had around 12-13 degrees). The lake scenery was beautiful, mystical and bizarre at the same time. The dead trees looked spooky with the incoming light from the top and the general darkness of the water added to that effect. In the shallow sandy areas not far from the entrance, lots of curious groupers approached us. They are used to divers and know that divers mean no harm and some extra food. All the stirring up of sediments exposes invertebrates that the groupers thankfully prey on. It was fun playing around with them. We stayed for around 45 minutes and were very happy but also cold.
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Beautiful ambient light during the second dive offered some great opportunities
[su_dropcap]A[/su_dropcap]fter some food and relaxation, we got back into the water at around sixish, with the warm evening sunlight still penetrating some areas of the lake. We entered at the same lake entrance, of which there are about seven or eight here, but agreed on focusing more on the 
vegetation area with all the dead trees and seaweeds. This time my housing was equipped with my Nikon D7100 and my Inon Z240 flash, and I was looking forward to starting developing my underwater photography skills. I was photographing in the M(annual) mode, choosing the aperture and shutter speed myself to have greater control of the image exposure. I also used the TTL mode to trigger the flash that is connected to my housing with an optical fibre cable. It was completely new to me and a great new challenge. Depending on the light situation, I tried to adjust the flash or switched it off to solely capture the natural ambient light. I was able to get some great shots and was really happy with the results, but I also produced quite a few crappy ones.
We ended this awesome day with a great vegan barbecue and some deco beers ;-) Again we saw loads of shooting stars challenging themselves in size. It was fantastic and kind of a beautiful German good-bye camp.
Our third dive – the shark is nowhere to be seen
[su_dropcap]T[/su_dropcap]he next day was warm but cloudy. We started rather late in the day and spend lots of time just getting into the day and dazing around. It took us a while to get ready and things sorted, but at around one, Jens drove the car with all the equipment towards the lake entrance and Stefan, Nuri and me followed on foot. One shouldn’t forget that the preparation of the equipment plus the care after the dives does take quite some time too. This time we wanted to try and see the shark that is installed in the lake to take a couple of images with it. Unfortunately, we didn’t find it, but nevertheless, we had a great one-hour dive. None of us was diving here before so we were just exploring the shore area and finished off again playing with the groupers. It was a fantastic time, and all of us went home tired but with a great experience and some good quality time!Do you have any experiences with BS Kinetics or another story to share? I´d be interested in hearing them!
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