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Depth of Field

January 5, 2019

In the 1940s Dave Owen developed an interest in deep-sea photography–then a field in its infancy. During a cruise to the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas in 1947 aboard the original research vessel Atlantis in 1947, Owen used a Ewing deep-sea camera to take flash photos of the sea floor at 18,000 feet below the surface, the deepest photograph of the sea floor at the time. His record stood for years and the photo later appeared in Life magazine. (Photo by Jan Hahn, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)