By rights, the pictures should not have worked. As the Caribbean Reef sharks swooped on the baits, 16 year old Sid Thaker leveled his Nikon F90x and took his first underwater pictures. Forced to shoot natural light because he had already trashed his strobe en route to the Bahamas, setting a precedent for future adventures, Sid was left with a choice of two lenses and two ports. He mismatched them. But Thaker is naturally lucky. The portraits he captured appeared first in Dive International Magazine in a feature showcasing emerging talent. Then they were selected to grace the cover and lead an article in a specialty magazine produced for ex-pats by the Financial Times. The subject they sought to illustrate was financial advisors. Thaker's break into underwater photography came by chance. As a keen diver he regularly visited local dive shops. Ocean Optics was on his circuit. It all began in 1997. "I mentioned that I had to find a place to do a weeks work experience. Steve Warren offered me a placement. I was supposed to be a gopher - go for coffees, go to the post office and so on. I never really left". Sidharth Thaker was born in Madras, southern India in 1981. Moving to the UK in 1988 he was schooled at Dulwich College, a prestigious fee-paying school in London. It was here that he fell into diving, becoming qualified through the school's BSAC youth branch. He dresses expensively, owns various high tech watches including a Suunto Stinger Titanium and changes his cell phones on a whim. So it was not suprising that he found the Nikon F90X seductive and fell for the professional accoutrements like the SB26 Speedlight and 80-200mm F2.8 zoom. The designer front partly screens attention from a naturally courteous, self effacing and reserved personality. The shyness is often masked when Thaker is "in character". He's a good mimic, able to draw howls of laughter from voice perfect impressions of the entire cast of Beavis and Butthead, The Simpsons and South Park. Ask a personal question and he's likely to deflect the inquiry away from himself by assuming one of these roles. It's this sleight of hand that makes it hard to fathom the real Sid Thaker. In his new university at Bristol, he studies Computing and Information Systems. He's mature enough to see underwater photography as a hobby and not a profession. Fresh from his success with the sharks, Thaker again found his byline in the press. Matt Crowther recalls the shoot for The Independent, a British national broadsheet in early 1998. "I was asked to take diving journalist Eric Kendell through the Diamond Reef Precision Buoyancy program for a feature article. I hired Crystal Palace diving pit and asked Steve Warren to shoot some pics. Steve suggested Sid come along and threw a camera at him. Basically he told Sid he could watch the master at work and although they wouldn't get used, he could even shoot pictures himself. The Independent chose Sid's images over Steve's, which wasn't in the plan, and the shot ran as a half page colour ... Steve was a bit knocked back". Taping for the BBC's Blue Planet began in the Northern Red Sea in summer '98. Peter Scoones, one of the best cameraman in the business, had chartered Coral Queen for a month. Berths were offered to selected guests. Thaker elaborates, "Only underwater photographers were invited. Optics sponsored me. Charles Hood was on board, so was David Nardini, so was Peter Rowlands. All leading lights. I'd dive with Steve [Warren]. We'd pull on twin sets, grab two cameras and disappear for a couple of hours. It was easy relaxed diving. Peter Scoones and Georgette Douwma (Scoones' girlfriend and stills photographer) were off doing their own thing. In the evenings they'd play back the rushes on a widescreen TV. It was fascinating to watch. Peter never used lights. He's got a filter drawer on his housing and adjusts the colour on the fly". A year later Thaker returned to Coral Queen to join a photo workshop instructed by wildlife photographer Constantinos Petrinos. They were already firm friends (Thaker is thanked in Petrinos' book Realm of the Pygmy Seahorse). Thaker was not expected. The larger than life Greek embraced the lad in a powerful bear hug that lifted the lanky six footer off the deck. "I have a high regard for Sid," enthuses Petrinos, "his abilities and his potential. His greatest asset is that he can take constructive criticism without being offended like some people. This, in my opinion, is the only way to move ahead in any field. He never stopped asking questions and I thought that this was challenging. Sid will take advantage of every opportunity to learn and that is why he could be "dangerous" in years to come. "Sometimes luck is on his side but after all, the recipe for success is a lot of hard work, plenty of disappointment, more hard work and a bit of luck. In this context I wish Sid all the luck in the world because he is talented and he can make it happen - whatever it is that he is aiming at." According to Thaker, "Costas is interesting to observe. He knows exactly the image that he wants to make and where to find it. He leaves as little to chance as possible. He likes to know what his competitors are shooting so he can fill gaps in the market that they've left unprotected." Petrinos was running his first workshop and was slightly stressed out during the first few days. He tried to relax by taking out his frustration on Thaker. "I was lining up a close-focus wide-angle shot on Ras. [Ras Mohammed - the famed wall found in the Egyptian Sinai] Con literally threw me aside and grabbed my camera. He messed quickly with the controls, composed the shot, pushed my mask up against the finder and jabbed at me to press the shutter release." Nor did he spare Sid's feelings when the rolls came out of the developing tank. He'd tell me, "this is crap. This is badly lit. Place your strobes here, not there, all with expansive waving of his arms to drive home the point. But he's sincere and took the view that if we'd signed on to learn from him, he'd better teach us. He's a good teacher and I learned a lot." Also aboard was Max Gibbs. Joint interests in marine life and photography led him to create his own successful image library supplying underwater shots to a wide ranging client base. He's considered a hard hitter. Gibbs thought long and hard before answering my request for his impression of Thaker. "He was dismissive of his efforts with the camera, but I thought this was the one area where he was not completely transparent. I felt that within himself he was very keen to do something worthwhile in that area." Colin Doeg was less easily won over, calling Thaker "a pain in the arse". Doeg is the co-founder of the British Society of Underwater Photographers and has worked on countless underwater photography features and books over the last forty years. Initially he found Thaker "irritating", but eventually he too fell for Thaker's easy charm and intriguing portfolio, perhaps recognising something of himself in the youngster's quest to try out new ideas, win or fail. He has gone on to encourage Thaker and it was his decision to give him his first publishing break in Dive International. Doeg takes up the narrative, "he is full of enthusiasm and ideas for pictures. Computer technology holds no fears for him. Neither do the complications of balanced flash, rear curtain synch, and all the other bewildering features of today's cameras. It's a little known fact that Sid was one of the first UK photographers to work with teleconverters. He does not need to pour over instruction books. Instinct guides him." It was not always so. Photo buddy Andrew Pugsley tells stories of long winded explanations of the depth of field button being useful because "it shows you how dark the picture will be." Along with shooting his own images that have found willing publishers, he's occasionally lent his expertise to others. One such assignment was a story for the Daily Mail, a UK tabloid. Thaker was asked to provide both underwater camera equipment and technical support to a professional press photographer. The story revolved around a specially built swimming pool that was used to exercise dogs. With Thaker's help the photographer got his picture of a dog diving in after his favourite toy. The story was later syndicated. The pro was generous enough to let Thaker do a few shots of his own, but smart enough not to offer them to his clients. There have also been disappointments. The Caribbean reef shark picture that had kicked off Thaker's early success failed even to be placed in the 1998 British Gas Wildlife Photography Juniors competition. Taking third place at an in house competition at Hull University, sponsored by Red Bull, left Thaker underwhelmed. Top prize was a thousand pounds and third only netted a certificate. He's a founding member of YUP, the loose alliance of teen and twenty-something underwater photographers set up by Alex Mustard. The two have an instinctive rapport. According to Mustard "most people are surprised that someone as young as Sid can take such great pictures. But I think that is part of the key to his success. The enthusiasm of youth brings fresh ideas to underwater photography, marking out his pictures from the crowd. A young mind also learns quickly which has enabled Sid to master technique. Start anything young and you have a headstart others will struggle to catch." 2000 was a productive year for Thaker. He spent six weeks on Embudu Finhuloo island in the Maldives at the Taj Coral Reef and Taj Lagoon resorts (his father is sales and marketing director for the group). It was then that he executed his seaplane images, pictures he'd thought about for nearly 12 months. 2001 was less so. A brief period at Hull University opened a new social world to him of dating and drinking which he embraced. This, in part, led him to do little diving during the summer. Instead he went surfing. Borrowing a Bonica Multi Snapper, he took to the breakers. Proving the adage that it's the photographer not the equipment that creates the image Thaker got very respectable images with the snapshot camera. 2002 has kicked off well. Thaker went to Mexico to dive around Cancun and Cozumel. The Cenotes exerted a special attraction on him. "They are quite different to ocean diving. These sinkholes are located inside the cover of the Mexican jungle and the tunnels lead on for miles. You go through haloclines [salt water sits on the bottom, fresh on top]. It's very weird. If a diver is ahead of you he seems to trail a foggy afterburner as his fins disturb and mix the layers. Your vision blurs and your buoyancy subtly alters. It's an excellent experience that left me hooked and wanting to try full on cave diving." He hopes to return to the Maldives and add to - and improve on - his Indian Ocean portfolio. He's rarely satisfied with what he's got. It's a trait common to many top photographers and what drives them to success. It's an endless search for most because the perfect shot in their audience's eyes is always flawed in their own. As Colin Doeg, The Elder Statesman of underwater photography says of the young pretender, "his natural talent for picture making has produced some stunning shots of everything from sharks to nudibranchs as well as close-ups of fish scales and soft corals. Geographically he's run the gamut from the English Channel to the Indian Ocean. Most people do not have his opportunities until they are middle-aged and their ideas and daredevil instincts to find even better pictures are beginning to fade. Sid is many years - and many good pictures - away from that condition." So what is the future for Sid Thaker? At twenty-three he is less than half the age of most serious underwater photographers. And, he can no longer evoke the Disney Kid sentiment he once could as the naive but likeable boy with a camera. His pictures must stand and be judged objectively - as he himself has always demanded they should be. Sid Thaker can look back on an illustrious beginning and forward to a potentially stunning future. Whether the man will grasp that future remains to be seen.  

See also:

Dive Global: Cenotes Diving with Sid Thaker