RICHARD EAKER

Growing up on a small family farm in the North Carolina foothills, I was always fascinated by the natural world. I became scuba certified in 1971 while attending graduate school in Inorganic and Nuclear Chemistry at Florida State University and quickly found the underwater world to be even more intriguing. After working in the utility industry for most of my career, I retired and began part time consulting in 2009 and moved to Palm Coast, FL in 2015. I began attempting to take underwater pictures in the late 1990s using a Nikonos 5/Helix strobe system. Two camera floods and 24-36 shots/dive resulted in few pictures before 2006 when I purchased my first digital camera and found that having the ability to shoot, edit, and store unlimited pictures fit in with having been born without a culling gene.

As my consulting time has become reduced, I also volunteer at Marineland discussing marine species with guests and conducting tours for school field trips. Most of my pictures have been in Florida or Cozumel with a few in Belize and Bonaire although I hope to start taking trips to other locations in the future. I recently upgraded to a Sony a6400/Fantasea housing/Inon 240Z + SeaFrogs (when it works) strobes but most of the pictures on this site were shot with either a Sony Nex-5N/single Inon 240Z strobe or Olympus 8080/Nikonos 105 strobe. The single strobe results in many of my pictures having shadows which can be distracting to some but occasionally add a little more sense of depth.

You can see more of my pictures at:
https://richardeaker.smugmug.com/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/8459071@N08/albums
https://biogeodb.stri.si.edu/caribbean/en/contributors/citizen_scientists
https://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?pl=1&plno=295235.