Yes, I noticed that with my landbased photography. People always compliment me on how I see some details that i take photos of, but personally I always feel I miss the whole experience by pressing that trigger constantly. Luckily I have learned now to enjoy the view without looking through the viewfinder. Mind you, my photographer's eye is always switched on. When I walk the streets of Shanghai my brain always tries to make compositions of what I see before me. At least my experience also taught me my limitations, so nowadays, sometimes when I see a scene that I think would be great to capture, I don't even raise the camera to my eye, because I recognise the scene as something that I would not be able to relay in a photo, so instead I just enjoy the moment.
Since it's also true that as a beginner I am still awed by many sights, I will certainly take that advice
By the way, a mate of mine went diving recently. First time in 20 years he said. He took his gf with him (her first time). He send me a gopro video clip and was very proud of that experience. Now, he behaves very much like a woman (I'm serious, the words he uses and the way he talks is as if your girlfriend is talking to you...It's scary...). What I saw really made me cringe... I decided not to tell him anything (I am a bad liar). I don't know what kind of guidance they had. It looked quite shallow, and close to a jetty of some sort. But basically I saw him chase after a turtle who all the divers in the water seemed to want to grab and pet. Now, the turtle seemed to be pretty much ignoring the divers, and didn't seem in any kind of distress (maybe it's used to that?), but that to me seemed like a no-no. I always learned to interact passively with aquatic life. Let them come to you, don't chase after them and refrain from touching them (there are known exceptions, such as dolphins I guess, who do like to play). So I wasn't too impressed with that. I also saw his gf water trampling like she was a shrimp! No one next to her, no one seeming to pay attention to her. SHe was pretty much walking across the bottom with her fins. I don't know how intro dives work (I don't mean the discover scuba diving thing, but the quick n fast one off dive experience), maybe they overload them with lead and keep their BCD deflated at all times to prevent potential runaways, but honestly, that technique just seemed wrong to me... There was sand silt and dust all over the place because of this (It was obvious it was stirred up crap, not stuff that floats in the water naturally). All in all the clip showed me things that simply did not impress me.
It's funny, I saw the same behaviour when I was taking flying lessons. Some people just get it impressively right, whilst others, even highly experienced trainers, sometimes really disappoint big time...
Personally I'm very honoured that I get the chance to practice this sport, so at work I talk about it a lot (I always talk a lot about new things I learn in life), and when colleagues ask me, I always suggest them to go to a reputable school and do a discover scuba diving experience, so they truly learn skills that they could potentially take with them to certification if they want to. The whole fun dive experience thing, sure, is good money for operators, but I can see it being a massive erosion on aquatic life...
For this reason I personally always look for operators that always pay a percentage to Project AWARE, and/or are PADI green award resorts. It just feels like they are more responsible in the water... (doesn't mean others are not of course...
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