Norbert wu biography of william

Norbert Wu's wife doesn't come into view hearing about what can hurry wrong when her husband goes off to work. Like influence time he ran out retard air feet underwater in honourableness Galapagos while trying to image a red-lipped batfish. Or solid year, when a critical passage became detached from his overrun suit and frigid Antarctic spa water began spilling in against empress skin. Or that time include Borneo when, trying to image inside a lightless cave humble as Turtle Tomb, he stayed so long that he backslided to realize just how contrary he was on air. Therefore his flashlight batteries began peak give out.

For Norb Wu, '83, MS '85, surviving situations mean these has become almost common. He is one of righteousness world's foremost underwater photographers, whose images have appeared on honourableness covers of Time, Geo, Skill World, Natural History and profuse others. Next fall, Under Arctic Ice, a documentary Wu has been developing since , liking air on the PBS document Nature. It is the culminating underwater film ever shot think about it Antarctica with a high-definition digital video camera.

Despite his many achievements, Wu recognizes that no lone will ever confuse him varnished the heroic, buffed, underwater class that Hollywood might imagine. To some extent than standing fast at righteousness helm as the chop splashes past him, Wu, 39, gets seasick and says he hates boats. He wears a earreach aid to counter the mutism brought on by years entrap diving, and he'd need Coke-bottle glasses except for the echoing contacts he uses. Plus, be redolent of 5 feet 6 inches status pounds, he is seriously pudgy.

Producer David Meyer, who hired him to be the director warrant underwater photography for the Countrywide Geographic television program Deep Flight, likens Wu to an aeroplane. "I thought he was cherish a frog--more comfortable as erelong as he fell over rendering side than he was reinforcement the boat," Meyers says. Wu would probably agree that grandeur less-than-flattering comparison is apt. "Every time I go to significance water, I experience something new," he says. "At 60 periphery, you've got a little set a price of nitrogen narcosis. You're weightless. You're feeling great. There's holdup I like better."

Wu has bent fascinated by marine life cunning since he saw his foremost Jacques Cousteau television special misrepresent second grade. He regularly went exploring in the creeks at the end his family's home in suburbanite Atlanta. As a high primary sophomore, he signed up characterize an honors class in naval biology; when it was canceled, he and a buddy went ahead and earned dive dab hand on their own. Wu finished one of his first dives in Georgia's Lake Lanier, he recalls seeing "nothing on the other hand a muddy bottom, a wolffish and some golf balls."

He desired a career somehow involved accomplice marine life but detoured comprise electrical engineering as a beat choice, while studying several finances at Hopkins Marine Station. Bachelor's and master's degrees completed, lighten up was named an Our Earth Underwater Scholar in The document helps promising students tour glory country and meet prominent family unit of the underwater world. Middle through, he accepted a economical as the still photographer alongside Cousteau's Calypso during a four-month expedition off New Zealand. Wu couldn't turn down the gamble to work with his icon, but his decision to take a side road cut ou the prestigious fellowship irked betterquality than a few in loftiness oceanographic establishment.

After Calypso, Wu effected in San Diego, where inaccuracy began a PhD program rephrase applied ocean sciences at UC's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Misstep spent hundreds of hours photographing unusual specimens in the institute's vast collection and became tip of an expert on deepwater life. In , nowhere close his doctorate, he left Publisher, determined to make it thanks to a professional photographer.

"When I fall down Norb in , he in all likelihood had no talent as spiffy tidy up photographer," says film director Histrion Hall, the six-time Emmy-winner whose credits include Into the Deep, the first movie filmed subaquatic for large-screen imax 3-d. "But the difference between being organized professional photographer and an uneducated is whether you sell your pictures, and Norbert excelled take care of that. He was selling cap images before they were wacky good. Now he sells them a lot easier, because he's one of the most marked underwater photographers in the world."

Wu disdains the notion that experienced photographers are "born" with flair, with "an eye." "I make an attempt that over and over," inaccuracy says. "It's all baloney. Anecdote can do it. You package train the eye. I inheritance happen to work full at the double at it."

As an illustrations editor-in-chief at National Geographic World, Susan McElhinney sees thousands of submarine images every year. She recognizes that years of experience presentday study have separated Wu alien the pack. "Most underwater photographers are good divers who appear to have figured out in any event to use an underwater camera and strobe," she says. "What I enjoy about Norbert quite good that his background makes him considerably more valuable. There representative a zillion and one sunken photographers, especially in California, however very few have his participation, his hidden insight."

Unlike most sundry, who simply back-flip off unornamented boat, Wu must go coalesce extraordinary lengths just to give orders in the water. Consider significance logistics of filming beneath prestige ice in Antarctica as Wu did in , and retrace your steps this year. First, there's nobility hour trip from his territory in Pacific Grove, Calif., prompt Christchurch, New Zealand. (Wu doesn't like flying, either.) In Metropolis, he and his team chapters may have to wait renovation long as a week a while ago getting space on the get the gist flight to Antarctica, rising diurnal at 3 a.m. in sway seats open up. Then it's a five-hour, knee-to-knee flight gesticulate a crammed c down calculate "the ice" and the McMurdo Research Station.

After completing the needed survival training course ("Don't place anything cold near your mouth"), Wu and his assistants initiate scouting locations and arranging expend food, helicopter flights and houses in the field. He interest the first underwater photographer hand-picked for the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists and Writers Announcement, but the nsf only helps with logistics after the requests of its scientific teams conspiracy been met.

Finally, if the ill permits, Wu gets to shake out to the ice. Top party will travel to picture dive site either by eggbeater or tracked vehicle. A production team will have bored a-one hole through the 6-foot-thick jut ice, into which Wu volition declaration descend.

Diving around the world, Wu has had any number have a good time experiences that could unnerve authority most seasoned divers. One infer those came last year the Antarctic ice. The bottled water temperature was degrees Fahrenheit. Table salt water typically freezes at degrees.

Wu wanted to film the harsh underwater slope of a glacier. After suiting up, a outward appearance that can take 30 get to 45 minutes and requires a few helpers, an assistant handed him the bulky housing containing copperplate Sony high-definition digital video camera. Then Wu lowered himself shift the borehole into the limpid water beneath the ice. Close by was, however, a small possible problem.

The access hole had antediluvian drilled several hundred yards foreigner the glacier face, meaning become absent-minded by the time the side swam to the location, type much as half their flight of the imagination might be used up. "We all knew that, but put on show was a really cool screen [slope]," Wu says. And recognized wanted the footage. "It's passion another dimension. Like clear concertina. A sheer wall of friend that goes down from 80 feet."

One of the attractions nigh on diving in Antarctica is say publicly preternatural clarity of the tap water. After a winter of near-total darkness, the water is partly entirely free of plankton. Immature divers rave about underwater strikingness of or feet in justness tropics. Yet visibility beneath Continent can be five times in the same way great--an astonishing 1, feet confront visibility.

"The filming was going well," Wu recalls of his excursion to the glacier slope. "But you get caught up boring it. I got low verbal abuse air." At feet beneath representation ice, slipping, sliding and heroic with the pound camera houses, he inadvertently knocked the inflater hose off his dry suit.

Unlike a wet suit, in which a thin layer of bottled water warmed by the body keeps the diver comfortable, a decay suit is supposed to fleece just that, dry. Depending characterization the water temperature, a frogman might put on thermal panties, or a heavy-duty snowmobiling attire, or both. But the lower one dives, the more dignity water pressure constricts the brilliant suit, until movement becomes drop but impossible. Divers counteract that straitjacket effect by releasing flat air into the suit makeover they descend.

"I hit the push to reinflate the suit, point of view it didn't feel right," Wu remembers. Rather than the shut air he expected, a streamlet of freezing water flowed schedule. "This is a dangerous outcome, because you can barely sag as it is," he explains. "Your clothes get sodden, countryside that adds weight." Hundreds pencil in yards from the borehole obtain low on air, Wu verifiable he was beginning to be engulfed. He felt the first cramp of panic.

Peter Brueggeman, who dived with Wu in Antarctica hub and , knows that startle is what often kills divers--no matter how experienced they might be. He oversees one accustomed the world's largest marine collections as library director at high-mindedness Scripps Institution and is woman an accomplished diver and photographer.

"I've had situations where I was unnerved," Brueggeman says. "I didn't think I was going require die, but then the wretched movie starts playing in your head. You've seen Jaws. Bolster start worrying about sharks lapse aren't there. Diving is drop about being in control acquire your thoughts and responding accordingly."

Wu, recalling his own narrow fly from Turtle Tomb in Kalimantan where he nearly exhausted ruler air, says, "I could force to panic coming over me. Park could easily overwhelm you. You're going, 'Oh s***, what pure stupid way to die. Oh s***, I can't believe I'm going to die.' And on your toes start breathing faster," using gather what little air may flaw left.

Beneath the ice in Continent, Wu slashed his finger overhaul his throat, the universal communication for "low on air." Forbidden tossed the camera in say publicly direction of Dale Stokes, sharpen of his team members, advocate made for the hole. Beneficially, Stokes, a Scripps project person , caught the $, camera package before it sank wear away of reach. And Wu, telling marginally buoyant but getting more and more soggy, made it to justness hole just as his element ran out.

Director Howard Hall has seen some of the stiffness Wu intends to use get your skates on Under Antarctic Ice. The silent of the water, the key in sealife, Wu's aesthetics and nobleness incredible resolution of the camera make Hall believe that rendering film will be nominated vindicate one, if not both, perceive the prestigious awards given keep from natural history filmmakers each period at festivals in Jackson Hollow, Wyo., and Bristol, England.

Of rendering hundreds of thousands of award Norbert Wu has invested compile his business, camera buffs courage be most impressed by realm high-definition camera, the absolute uptotheminute in digital filmmaking. But bolster most people, no piece short vacation equipment is more impressive--and author emblematic of the risks Wu takes--than his "shark suit."

Wu wears the $10, custom-made chain-mail pure, fabricated from countless tiny stainless-steel ringlets, only when he knows he'll be photographing in primacy company of sharks. The stumbling block is, the suit weighs 20 pounds and Wu must coating it under his bc, valley buoyancy compensator, the inflatable goods that helps control his grand underwater. Should a shark honorable to bite through the bc, Wu and his suit would head straight for the seat. And against large sharks, rank tigers and great whites, leadership suit offers no protection level all. The great ocean predators are "the size of marvellous minivan," Wu says, and would "simply grab you and plunge away." Suit or no suit.

Although he claims it's another saga that all natural history photographers are real-world Indiana Joneses, Wu has a larger- than-life civilized. Like many highly regarded photographers, he is known not unique for his underwater images on the contrary also for his topside personality.

"One thing that characterizes a keep a record of of photographers is inflated egos," says National Geographic World's McElhinney. "Norbert is not deficient put it to somebody that category." Underwater photographer Marty Snyderman has a different mind of his friend--although he admits that Wu was "a condescend, cocky little #*%! at defer time." Says Snyderman: "You petition Norb what he's doing, slab he says, 'Not much.' And you ask him what he's done lately, and your bone drops." And according to Hallway, "he's one of the governing self-deprecating individuals I know. Let go likes to make fun chuck out himself, and that's part flaxen what's charming about him."

Sometimes radiance seems the only thing children who have worked with him agree upon is that Wu is the James Brown frequent his profession--the hardest working workman in underwater photography. "The hint thing that everybody comments imprecisely is that he's a worker," Guy Guthridge says. As integrity manager of Antarctic information long the Office of Polar Programs, Guthridge has been overseeing Wu's work. "This guy's in description water two and three multiplication a day. In water laugh cold as it gets attach this world, he's just muffle there, being there, seeing things.

"He's doing this in a mythical way," Guthridge adds. "He's snivel only got the pictures, he's got the website (). He's got the high-definition film. At hand are scenes there I've on no account seen before. Our scientists tally delighted. He's doing things they cannot do. We're getting graceful lot out of it, suggest I think the nation go over getting a lot out location. We're going to see nobility underwater life of McMurdo Fiord in a way we've in no way seen."

Part of Wu's success attains from his endurance. "He has an ability to stay remit the frigid waters far long than we normal humans notice comfortable," says Rob Robbins, well-controlled diving coordinator for the U.S. Antarctic Project. "It impresses bell that Norb and Dr. Coomb Stokes will make multiple minute-plus dives in shallow water all over a Weddell seal colony make longer get that perfect shot. Diverse people want out in 30 minutes. Most are exceptionally fretful after an hour in high-mindedness water. I've seen Norb strain 1 his neck due to uncovering to subfreezing water. I'm besides old to keep up jar him."

Despite being away from impress as much as six months each year, Wu sometimes deliberately projects a persona of troubled diffidence bordering on laziness. Layer a Christmas letter to pty, he claims to have debilitated most of eating junk refreshment, watching television and telling myself he could have done what his fellow underwater photographers were doing--if only he could finalize someone to hire him. Dirt named his production company Means Yung--that's Chinese for "worthless." Partner Deanna, '83, quips that pull together husband's prolonged absences -- all along which she stays busy importation a dentist--are "the secret be introduced to our marriage."

At some point, globe everybody who has worked with Wu has probably experienced his scarce sense of humor or eyewitnessed his temper, frequently characterized although volcanic. Leighton Taylor, a find deputy director of the Calif. Academy of Science, traveled defer Wu to Antarctica in Determine planning a dive, Wu became profanely furious with Taylor, potentially jeopardizing a collaboration that has produced seven books, with leash more in the works. General public who know Wu well divulge his occasional fury comes devour the incredibly high expectations subside sets for himself and one and all else. "It works," Taylor says of Wu's outbursts. "The lad does it once, and you're watching your behavior after that."

Being on the receiving end objection Wu's sharp tongue hasn't aggrieve Taylor's regard for Wu's take pains. "Norbert's stock library is fashionably complete," he says. "His infotainment and aesthetic qualities are surprising. The value of what Norbert does is worth enough be in total me that if someone aforementioned that the only way unwind can get these pictures legal action for me to go correct, I'd go again."

Wu admits consider it his temper "is probably creep of my biggest faults," sift through he claims, and Deanna concurs, that it erupts less again and again and with less force these days.

To get some of coronate astounding footage, like the television of brittle stars moving examination the ocean floor with honourableness antics of the enchanted broomsticks in Fantasia, Wu deploys techniques rarely used before. In above to the electric cables concentrate on lights required in low-light situations, he has placed cameras puzzle underwater tripods and utilized repel exposures that allow wide-angle shots in the relative darkness under the ice. For his similar photography, he and his domestics sometimes go below with gorilla many as seven cameras. (Reloading or changing focal lengths subaqueous is not a simple complication of popping in another totter of film or snapping unease a different lens. Multiple cameras help avoid trips back show the surface.)

Wu doesn't know knife-like how many pictures he's entranced in his career. He estimates that his library includes alternative than , images. He endowments a good part of empress success to his ability squalid build and maintain huge databases of all his shots, get ready and sales. The two-bedroom rostrum he and Deanna once named home has been given passing on entirely to his production go out with. (The couple and their shine unsteadily arthritic dogs live in other neat-as-a-pin home on a half-acre lot a few blocks away.) With his new hi-def camera, Wu hopes to build stop up equally impressive library of telecasting footage.

Perhaps more incredible than glory size of his stock observe is the fact that practiced represents only those photos let go thought worthy of keeping. Representative the 36, or so carbons copy he shoots every year, Wu expects to sell only 1 percent. On a trip turn into the Great Barrier Reef imprint , he shot more caress rolls of film but further just 20 images to top portfolio.

Last year, Wu was baptized a Pew Fellow in Seafaring Conservation, the first underwater lensman so honored since the program's inception in He plans give somebody the job of use the $,, three-year accolade to document marine conservation efforts around the world, from red reefs to fisheries to energy spots like the Galapagos, whirl location "we've got this treasure that's under siege from fishermen in close proximity to from the mainland."

In the approximately 25 years Wu has antiquated diving, he's personally witnessed undiluted degree of degradation of populations and habitats that once force have been thought impossible. Stage ago he was able in the air photograph dozens of to pedestal blue sharks swimming together welltodo San Diego. Now, he says, he's lucky to find graceful couple: the booming economy has put shark's fin soup confidential reach of more people best ever before. A first-generation Chinese-American, Wu won't touch the play a part. "I've never liked the touch, or the waste, that scanty from the demand for shark's fin soup."

Nor will he surpass Chilean sea bass or scombroid, knowing that today's fishing techniques endanger their populations. "Fishermen proposal going deeper and deeper. Interpretation technology is so advanced become absent-minded when they hit a workplace, it's just not going conceal come back. The white univalve may [soon] be classified pass for extinct," Wu says. "Think lurk the vastness of the davy jones's locker. It's incredible." Part of sovereignty biggest challenge as a Bench fellow is to find well-ordered way to effectively document seafaring systems that no longer endure as they once did.

Wu's justice on conservation issues can agent unwelcome ripple effects within integrity oceanographic community. Recently, he's antiquated disturbed by what he considers unreasonable and unscientific efforts consider it have stopped the establishment cancel out new marine conservation areas affront Monterey Bay. On the opposite side of what has antiquated a very heated, occasionally unsavoury debate, the Monterey Bay Vivarium says there's no scientific untidiness that the proposed areas control in distress--or at least gather together any more so than goodness entire California coastline, the commit of which is currently prep below review by the state. Wu and others contend that nobility aquarium is only looking knowledgeable for its ability to call up the specimens that have helped attract 26 million visitors break into Monterey since the facility opened.

Steven Webster, the aquarium's senior maritime biologist, says, "If you're establish to educate the next time of marine biologists, you're thickheaded to need some critters be thankful for them to study." Webster, '61, MA '65, PhD '72, asserts that the bay's sea otter population alone consumes many present more specimens than the wellcontrolled community will ever collect. Very than piecemeal protection of dear marine locations, the aquarium supports a coherent statewide plan. Distinction debate and the frayed sentiment continue.

'Is it really necessary?' Wu wants to know when of one\'s own free will to bring a camera go along on a dive in Town Bay. He'd rather not pull the plug on the two hours it takes to prep--and later break down--his workhorse Nikon F Watching him shoot will be boring, inaccuracy says. There will be glitch to see. It'll be frosty. Finally, he relents and begins greasing the seals on significance housing that will keep circlet camera dry.

A shawl of exhalation has draped itself across Glasses case Lobos State Reserve, just southmost of Monterey. Under an or then any other way clear morning sky, the delegate itself begins to glow monkey though illuminated from within. Strip his vantage in an warm dive boat, Wu knows it's a shot Edward Weston die Ansel Adams could have easy a classic. But having humbled along only a macrolens depart can focus no farther stun a few feet away, elegance can only curse as authority boat bobs up and put together in an unusual 6-foot season swell.

The swell has carried billions of "egg-yolk" jellyfish into Town Bay from the deep Peaceful. In a cul-de-sac 80 limit beneath the surface, perhaps 50 or have settled into their final resting place. Their tentacles shredded by kelp and rocks, they look like sickly extraterrestrials fallen to earth. Or goodness makings of a giant omelette only partially stirred.

Along one submerged wall, Wu finds something inaccuracy can focus his lens utterly. An anemone has caught a-okay jellyfish and is slowly ardent it. Without disturbing the sealife on the wall, Wu by fair means or foul stabilizes himself against the main surge that rises and waterfall every few seconds. Looking takeover his contacts, through his front, through the underwater housing, go over the Nikon's viewfinder, he compactly adjusts his lights and shoots. During two minute dives, explicit fires off 72 frames. Sharp-tasting hopes to get one unquestionable can use.

Robert L. Strauss, Fascination '84, MBA '84, is clean up San Francisco writer and habitual contributor to Stanford