Designer, Sheryl Checkman with artist David Dunleavy at his booth at Beneath the Sea

I would love to have been beneath the sea today but since that wasn’t possible I did the next best thing – I took a bus out to the Meadowlands Expo Center to “Beneath the Sea,” the annual Consumer Dive Show. I got to listen to some interesting seminar presentations, which succeeded in further wetting my appetite to get back into the water. I re-lived past dives during a presentation on the Turks & Caicos Islands by Michel Gilbert & Danielle Alary, discovered some new Photoshop tips from Larry & Denise Tackett and learned about photographing models underwater with photographer Jason Heller. Jason’s newsletter, Dive Photo Guide is a great resource for underwater photographers. In between seminars I got a chance to catch up with some friends from the two dive clubs that I belong to: OceanBlue Divers and NYUPS (New York Underwater Photographic Society).

And that was just the morning.

After the seminars I set off to walk the show, make some contacts and see who else I would run into. I stopped by my friend, David Dunleavy’s booth to see his latest work and catch up. David paints beautiful ocean life paintings and murals. I even bought one of his t-shirts. If you like the t-shirt that I have on in the photo above, it’s one of my “Life is Balance® Neutral Buoyancy Scuba designs.

I joined REEF to show my support for the ocean environment. The Reef Environmental Education Foundation is a grass-roots organization helps conserve marine ecosystems by educating, enlisting and enabling divers and other marine enthusiasts to become active ocean stewards and citizen scientists. I bought a beautiful DVD  called “Sensational Seas Two” which is a compilation of various top underwater photographers and videographers and is narrated by Stan Waterman and Annie Crawley. It’s a wonderful view into the undersea world and all proceeds benefit ocean charities. I can’t wait to show it to my friends who don’t dive and always ask me what it is that makes me so obsessed with the sport!

In honor of the solstice here are a few of my summer designs from my shop for you to look at. There are plenty more where they came from so please come stop by and browse through all my sections. You don’t have to be a scuba diver to love these shirts & gifts. See more designs at WearMyDiveArt.com and Wear My Dive Art!

I have been diving since the late 80′s and have been a designer even longer than that. Last year I bought my first underwater digital camera housing and started to play around with underwater photography. Not really knowing what I was doing, my first shots were lets say, less than perfect! As I took more pictures, my compositions got better (the fish still weren’t stopping to pose for me but I stopped chasing them too). I started concentrating on the corals (they don’t move) and found so many different and unusual patterns under the water to photograph. Back on the surface, I put them up on my computer and started playing around with the images in Photoshop. I combined several images together into one to make some pretty cool abstractions. Then by adding filters I was able to create images that look more “fine art” than realistic photography.

I started to get excited about what I was creating and couldn’t wait to get back into the water to start adding more subject matter for my art. I bought an Epson Archival printer in the hopes that I could start to sell my artwork as prints suitable for framing. You can check out the available prints at: Underwater Fine Art or click the link on my sidebar. I also started to put these images on t-shirts and other great gift items that might appeal to other divers. You can see my available tee, sweats & other unique gifts at my shop Wear My Dive Art or by clicking the link on the sidebar.