Photographs by Ben Lowy
Story by Kyle Almond, CNN
When Ben Lowy starts something, he jumps right into the deep end.
The award-winning photographer began his career in a war zone, covering Iraq in 2003.
And for his first underwater assignment, he went face to face with great white sharks.
“You see them, and this little reptilian part of your brain is like, ‘You need to get out of the water right now,’ ” Lowy said.
On land, you can use a long lens and get a great photo while keeping your distance from dangerous animals such as lions or bears.
Not in the water.
“With underwater photography, you get really close. You have to,” Lowy said. “I'm using a 12-millimeter lens. I'm right on that because after about 15 feet, there's nothing but blue, you don't get any color.
“Everything is shot between super on top of my camera to maybe 5 to 10 feet away. No one does that with a lion.”
Divers use protective cages to shield themselves from great white sharks. But that doesn’t make seeing one any less terrifying.
“I can have the best camera housing, the best scuba gear, and ultimately you’re still basically prey for whatever it wants to do,” Lowy said.
Since 2015, Lowy has been throwing himself more into underwater photography. He was getting burnt out from covering war and politics, and needed a new outlet.
“For years, all I wanted to do was be a conflict photographer and social-issue photographer and really document the things I felt like people were too apathetic to witness or care about,” he said. “But there is more to the world than that.”
In addition to great whites off Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, Lowy has photographed marine life off the coast of Cuba and various island nations in the Pacific. He’s dove with jellyfish, sea lions, turtles and crocodiles.
There’s an adrenaline rush that comes with the adventures, but it’s also relaxing, Lowy said.
“It's almost like sensory deprivation. You're just floating in the water doing something physical and then have a split second to make an image. It is very different from the other aspects of photography that I know.”
Lowy is open about his post-traumatic stress disorder, which he said started after a series of bomb blasts in Iraq in 2007.
The water offers him an escape, freedom from the outside world.
It also allows him to be closer to his family. His wife, Marvi Lacar, joins him on his underwater shoots, and his oldest son, 8-year-old Mateo, has gone snorkeling with them.
“My kids are young, and I'm trying to see the world the way they do,” Lowy said. “They've influenced me to look at things that are maybe not as horrible as where I started my career, and to sort of appreciate the wonder of the world.”
Ben Lowy is a photographer based in New York. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter.
Photo editor: Brett Roegiers