Last weekend in Chicago was a wild one, with Our World-Under sending waves through the West Side. One of my favorite presentations of the weekend was at the Film Festival Saturday night. Ernie Brooks gave a sideshow of images from his new book Silver Seas: a Retrospective. Ernie Brooks’ Black and White photos use silver-gray, black, and white tones to expose the light streaming through his images, silhouettes his subjects, and transform the textures found in abundance in Ernie’s underwater world.
Ambassador to the Marine Environment Photographer, Adventurer, Diver and Educator Ernest H. Brooks II was born to be a photographer. His Portuguese ancestry, rich in men-of-the-sea, virtually insured the ocean environment would play an important role in his life. As the son of Ernest H. Brooks, founder of the internationally-renowned Brooks Institute of Photography, Mr. Brooks was destined to follow in his father's footsteps for part of his life's journey before forging his own path.
Mr. Brooks has been a trailblazer in the development of underwater photographic equipment and technique, and has witnessed great industry advances. And though he has harnessed and implemented much of that new technology, at a time when a plethora of color underwater photographs illustrate magazines and glossy brochures, he, perhaps surprisingly, favors black and white. "I don't think that blue, an inherent color of the ocean, really adds to many photographs, especially of mammals - and I like the quality of black and white. Also, I get the personal satisfaction of working with black and white in being able to control the development and printing." The ocean and underwater photography are among his main interests. In the pursuit of dramatic marine images, he has descended into the fascinating waters beneath the polar icecaps as well as into the depths of almost every ocean on Earth.
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