MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Winter 2018

Geoff Coombs’ winter underwater photography is startling. Initial reactions: Where is this? What’s happening here? How did he shoot this? Like any pro, Coombs won’t let us in on all his technique secrets, but being a freediver allows him to go where he needs to for the shot. “Freediving” is underwater descent on a single breath of air, and practised divers can train themselves to stay submerged for several minutes at a time. For this shoot, “each dive was anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute or so,” says Coombs. “Not that long, because it's cold. Usually we do casual dives well over a minute to two minutes when it's warm.” Coombs stayed under with competitive freediver Andrew Ryzebol as long as it took—capturing him adrift under a thick prison wall of ice. The hole through the ice where they gained access is not obvious or fully visible in the frame. And the composition also benefits by featuring a diver unburdened by scuba gear. We don’t recommend deep or prolonged freediving, which is dangerous and occasionally deadly. This is a sport that should never be attempted alone, and never without training. “We train by diving,” Coombs adds. “We also train in the pool over the winter to maintain and improve our breath holds.” Ryzebol is an AIDA freedive Geoff Coombs beckons us down into a seldom-seen underworld photos :: Geoff Coombs 86 ML BLUE WINTER 2018 Orbit "Here, Andrew is suspended weightless beneath the ice. This was a warmer February day where the frozen layer melted and broke off into massive individual slabs of ice."