We've been watching a lot of Treasure Quest lately. This show hits on a lot of things I love: history, underwater photography, techie gadgets, archaeology, boats, and diving! Holy yes!
It's a fascinating show. These guys are the group that found the Titanic, and they operate a fleet of ships equipped with sea rovers that comb the ocean floor looking for shipwrecks. Operating cost per day on one of these rigs is upwards of $35,000 USD.
They use sonar to map the ocean floor and then dive on any sites that appear to be a ship or sub. Once down, the rover picks around looking for anything that can help to identify the identity of a downed ship: imprints on cannon, shoes, gun turrets, paddle wheels, burnt timber, etc. Most of the time they don't even have to bring the object to the surface to identify it, as the rover is equipped with lights and hi-res cameras.
Add in the cocky Scottish archaeologist, the team of brilliant brother engineers (one of whom their captain claims is a cyborg created by the other), the tough ex-submariner (who looks like a Hell's Angel of the Sea), various guests, bad weather, malfunctioning technology, and harassment by countries whose waters they're close to, and you've got HIGH SEAS DRAMA!
It brings up an interesting topic though. Photography is used for forensics, archaeology and entertainment so extensively we tend to take it for granted. Without cameras, how would we document a person's life from babyhood through to old age, watch our favorite movie or TV show, solve a crime, see the far reaches of outer space, document history, etc etc?
I guess there would be a lot less starving artists. ;D
So do your part! Get a nice vintage camera from The Collector Detector and start contributing!
Less starving artists, indeed! When you really think about it, simply amazing what cameras have allowed us to do. Another great post...
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