holding my breath while taking a photo

[DevonDiver]

Holding your breath is not an issue....holding your breath and ascending is an issue. .

Ah yes... I seem to recall that directive in most open water manuals for most agencies

You have to keep an open airway. Your glottis has to be open to your lungs. If you are not actively breathing, then it would be closed. If it is closed...then you are at risk of a fatal injury.

Why screw around with this?

Breath continiously and never hold your breath.

It sounds pretty damn simply to me......

lionsandtigers.... if you are going to make sweeping statements on a global forum, that could effect people's lives and safety.... perhaps you would care to substantiate them with a few medical references, agency directives, DAN reports....etc etc etc

Otherwise, please remember that inexperienced divers read these forums....

 

[tedj101]

But that's for a different purpose -- you are trying to eliminate even the slightest movement in the weapon. Slight movement in most modern cameras is not the problem the photographer is trying to avoid. What I am trying to avoid is spooking the subject which I have carefully approached to a very close range. Exhaling is the last thing that I want to do and too much inhaling will get you ascending.

Just my $.02 worth...

<TED>

when teaching marksmanship, we teach a basic idea that seems to apply here. Between an exhale and an inhale you have a natural pause. That pause is the optumal time to squeeze the trigger, or in your case, snap the picture.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Ah yes... I seem to recall that directive in most open water manuals for most agencies

You have to keep an open airway. Your glottis has to be open to your lungs. If you are not actively breathing, then it would be closed. If it is closed...then you are at risk of a fatal injury.

Why screw around with this?

Breath continiously and never hold your breath.

It sounds pretty damn simply to me......

lionsandtigers.... if you are going to make sweeping statements on a global forum, that could effect people's lives and safety.... perhaps you would care to substantiate them with a few medical references, agency directives, DAN reports....etc etc etc

Otherwise, please remember that inexperienced divers read these forums....

Actually, she's right ... it's simple physics.

But you are also right ... the rule "never hold your breath" exists for a reason.

So let's talk about that reason.

New divers are taught a lot of "rules of thumb" that directly impact their safety. The "never hold your breath" rule is based on the fact that air expands as you ascend, and that your lungs ... with your glottis closed ... are a closed system. Remember the expanding balloon that most instructors use as an example in basic OW class. The rule exists because the alvaeoli in our lungs are extremely fragile, and there's no pain centers down there to tell us when air expansion is on the verge of damaging them. So it's extremely important for newer divers ... who usually struggle with buoyancy control ... to adhere to this rule for their own safety.

Fast forward to when those same divers become more experienced, have their buoyancy control down pretty well, and have taken up photography. Do the same rules apply? Should they?

The answer is ... as with most things involving scuba ... "it depends". Even if you can manage your buoyancy quite well, excessive breath-holding can lead to a buildup of carbon-dioxide in the bloodstream ... and that can create a few different issues for the diver at any level. So you want to be careful not to overdo it. But let's face it ... as our buoyancy control improves, we DO use our lungs to fine-tune that control throughout the dive by modulating (and moderating) the level at which we breathe to increase or decrease our state of buoyancy. Experienced divers learn how to pause briefly between inhale and exhale to enhance the O2/CO2 exchange on each breathing cycle. Experienced underwater photographers do, in fact, learn how to modulate ... even pause ... their breathing to hold in a particular position while taking a shot (and as someone pointed out, to avoid the effect of bubbles during the shot).

The trick isn't to "just say no" ... it's to moderate your behavior and to understand what the potential risks are. Specifically ...

- "Never hold your breath" really means "never close your throat" ... and it's simple to stop breathing without closing your glottis. The important thing is to know that's what you need to do.

- Never ascend while holding your breath ... because even those who are experienced at doing it may, in a moment of complacency, close their throat ... and it doesn't take a whole lot of air expansion in your lungs to do damage. You won't feel the damage happening ... there's no nerves down there to give you that kind of feedback ... until it's too late.

So ... to answer the OP's question ... yes, most photographers DO stop breathing while they're taking a picture. If you don't, then you have to contend with minute changes in buoyancy at a time when it's important to be holding critically still in order to frame the shot you want. However, before you attempt something like that you should make sure you have solid buoyancy control skills and that you have developed your awareness to the point where you can pay attention not just to your shot, but to what's going on around you.

In other words, it's an advanced skill ... one that new divers shouldn't, for their own safety, be doing.

Like most things ... the rules change as you gain experience and expertise. Take it a step at a time ... it's just safer that way.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[ligersandtions]

lionsandtigers.... if you are going to make sweeping statements on a global forum, that could effect people's lives and safety.... perhaps you would care to substantiate them with a few medical references, agency directives, DAN reports....etc etc etc

Otherwise, please remember that inexperienced divers read these forums....

Wow, seriously??? I wouldn't expect this kind of crap from a "tech instructor". You know as well as I do that the issue with holding your breath comes into play when you ascend and gas expands....

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you equalize your ears during your descent. Am I right? Cause if you do, you momentarily hold your breath and close your airway so that you can pressurize your ears. Right now, you're breaking your cardinal rule of diving.

I'm not saying people should hold their breath, nor am I "making sweeping statements that could affect (not effect, btw) people's lives and safety"....but there's no good reason to give rules but not explain them. It's nice to say don't hold your breath, always breathe continuously, keep your airway open, etc....but people should understand WHY these are said, and then understand that it's not an issue if you hold your breath for a moment as long as you're not ascending.

I'm not going to tell people to try to hold their breath underwater and see who can do it longest without hurting themselves....but if someone asks if it's okay to hold their breath momentarily while snapping a picture, I'll tell them it's okay provided they are not ascending.

 

[Sinbad the Diver]

But that's for a different purpose -- you are trying to eliminate even the slightest movement in the weapon. Slight movement in most modern cameras is not the problem the photographer is trying to avoid. What I am trying to avoid is spooking the subject which I have carefully approached to a very close range. Exhaling is the last thing that I want to do and too much inhaling will get you ascending.

Just my $.02 worth...

<TED>

then you are talking about holding your breath, not pausing your breath. I'd say that's asking for trouble, but many posts here with more reasoned and educated explanations than I can provide. I think the shooting analagy works though because to effectively use the pause, you have to have a controlled consistent breathing pattern. If you are doing that as you approach, it should prevent you from spooking your subject. In other words, it's not the pause itself, it's the mechanism for achieving the pause that holds the value.

 

[DeepSeaExplorer]

The breath hold rule is used to educate entry level divers so they don't injure their lungs during pool sessions and any rapid ascents they might make on their first few dives.

Once a diver gains time and comfort level in the water, it's rarely an issue. Though I rarely need to, I sometimes take a deep breath and hold it to raise my position in the water. And, like most divers, I have even been known to inhale during my ascent. In more advanced classes your instructor may even instruct you how to avoiding a crash into the silt by taking a deep breath, holding it, and touching down with just one finger to avoid siltout.

I too am surprised that someone with enough dives to be a tech instructor would take such a 'text book' position. There's a training environment and then there's real world. I've never heard of a diver getting an AGE that didn't involve a paniced rush to the surface, and that's not what we're discussing.

 

[Blackwood]

But that's for a different purpose -- you are trying to eliminate even the slightest movement in the weapon. Slight movement in most modern cameras is not the problem the photographer is trying to avoid. What I am trying to avoid is spooking the subject which I have carefully approached to a very close range. Exhaling is the last thing that I want to do and too much inhaling will get you ascending.

Just my $.02 worth...

<TED>

Not spooking a subject is part of it, but regardless of how old or new your camera, if the sensor/film is moving relative to the subject, you're going to get blur (less whatever image stabilizing capability your camera may have).

 

[Blackwood]

This thread relates to the old "balloon underwater" question from BOW.

"If you fill a balloon with 1L of gas at a depth of 2ATA, what happens to it as you ascend to 1ATA?"

The SCUBA textbook answer is: its internal volume doubles 2L (illustrating the P1V1/P2=V2 relationship from the simplified perfect gas law) or it ruptures.

The real answer is: it depends, namely on whether you tie off the balloon or you allow air so escape.

If you tie off the balloon, its internal volume doubles or it ruptures.


In that analogy the balloon is the lung, and tying it off is the closed glottis. Like electricity, air will take the path of least resistance. So long as you maintain an open airway, air will simply bubble out as it expands rather than fight the tension in the lung tissues.

Contrary to an above post, you don't have to be actively breathing (i.e. either inhaling or exhaling) in order to have an open glottis. The reason (I believe) scuba agencies teach "the golden rule" is that it's easier to explain than the actual anatomy, and it's the failsafe because if you are either inhaling or exhaling your airway must be open. But that doesn't make it right, and it leads to a common misconception (namely that if you experience a runaway ascent you must exhale continuously on the way up).

 

[Dtaine]

if you are going to make sweeping statements on a global forum, that could effect people's lives and safety.... perhaps you would care to substantiate them with a few medical references, agency directives, DAN reports....etc etc etc

Otherwise, please remember that inexperienced divers read these forums....

Would you like to share some of your "medical references, agency directives, DAN reports, etc" you've mentioned that you have this or that, but provided nothing quoted or sourced.

Is it really so shocking that someone could hold their breath slightly while taking a photo and be perfectly fine afterwards?

 

[DevonDiver]

Quotations that prove you should not hold your breath underwater?? Do I really need to do that?

Yes, we all agree that holding breath is only an issue if the ambient pressure should drop and cause air volume expansion inside the lungs, where the glottis is sealing the airway.

Ascent is the primary cause of this reduction in ambient pressure. But not the only one. Large surface swell could have a similar effect.... I know that these situations are so unlikely as to be virtually infeasible - but they do exist and they could be fatal.

Sorry, I don't mean to be pedantic about this..... but I strongly believe that cardinal rules exist for valid reasons. To say they only apply to novice divers reeks of a complacent attitude and, from my experience, belies the sort of short-cutting and rule bending of divers who have gained confidence in the water, but yet to encounter the realities that these rules exist for.

I have a reasonable amount of experience in the water now.... and I still hold true to these cardinal rules. I would think that some of the less experienced divers posting on this thread could benefit from some re-assessment of their percieved capabilities and take the opportunity to go back to basics.