George Perina

Photographer

Location: Fort Bragg, California Camera: Nikonos, Sony F707, Sea & Sea SX1000 Genre: Nature and Wildlife URL: www.lifeintheseas.com Contact: george@lifeintheseas.com

Biography

George Perina recently moved from Santa Barbara to Fort Bragg, California. The coastal scenery, the abundant marine life, and the forest wildlife of Northern California proved to be an irresistable temptation, luring him away from "the big city." He now divides his time between photography and computer consulting. Though photography is his passion, computers are what pay the bills and keeps him in camera equipment. "I still haven't reached the stage where I can devote myself entirely to photography, as much as I'd like to." One of his favorite photo themes is colors in Nature, and he's now at work creating a series of pictorial essays entitled "Nature's Rainbow."

He's been an active diver for 30 years, and has logged several thousand dives. His images have appeared in ISLANDS and SPORT DIVER magazines. He has an underwater calendar coming out this year called "In The Sea," featuring many of his favorite images.

After leaving the army, where he took up photography as a hobby, his love of the ocean compelled him to move to Santa Barbara, to pursue a degree in marine biology. "I've always been fascinated by the sea and the creatures in it. A degree in marine biology and an interest in underwater photography were natural extensions of that life-long fascination."

Though computers occupy too much of his time today, he spent 7 years as a dive instructor working throughout the Caribbean and the Red Sea. He got hooked on computers about ten years ago and went back to school to study networking and hardware. It felt odd to start a new career at 40, but computers have been his main focus for last 9 years. "Computers hold a special fascination for me. I find it almost inconceivable that I can go on a beach dive in the morning --and show the pictures to someone in London later on that same day via the Internet."

www.lifeintheseas.com, his website, was originally designed as a simple home page, to share his photos with his fellow divers and co-workers. But the site has grown, and he now receives inquiries from all over the world about his travels, marine biology and photography. "I love it when I get a comment from grade-school students asking about marine life, or a photography question from somewhere half-way around the world like New Zealand. We truly have become a global community."