Upcoming Show - Cortez Blue Photography

[AZTinman]

If you haven't liked our Cortez Blue Photography Facebook Page or maybe you're not a Facebook user yet, you missed our recent announcement of our upcoming exhibit at the Casa Grande Art Museum.


Yes, it's official! The Cortez Blue Photography exhibit opens at the Casa Grande Art Museum on January 15, 2016! The show will run three weeks. While the show will focus on the Sea of Cortez, it will include photographs from Southern Cali and Hawaii as well. Of course, if road tripping to Arizona for a photography exhibition doesn't strike your fancy, you're welcome to check out our work at www.cortezbluephotography.com. Looking at photographs on our website costs you nothing.


An art museum exhibit is new territory for us and even though we're a ways out from our opening date, we're scrambling to get photographs for the show put together. Preparing for a gallery show is a learning experience. One thing we've learned rather quickly is what a pain in the butt framing art work can be. Doing-it-yourself framing helps reduce overall costs for clients who wish to purchase photographs and art work. We've developed a lot of respect for the folks who work at frame shops.


While the Casa Grande Art Museum Board will be doing some local advertising, promoting our exhibit outside the Casa Grande area is our responsibility. Again, this is totally new territory for us.


If you are a Facebook user, please like the Cortez Blue Photography Facebook page. A 'like' will get you updates on our progress as we move towards our opening date and get you updates about projects we'll be working on between now and our opening. This fall, we'll be diving some areas in the Northern Sea of Cortez that have seen little historical diving activity. Fun stuff!


Thanks!


-AZTinman

 

[Capt. Pete]

Best of luck with your event!

 

[Sam Miller III]

I wish you well with you up coming exhibit-- Only six months before it opens...

I note you are from Casa Grande and your Arizona companion is from Goodyear...Know them well from many years gone by.

I was stationed at Luke AFB during the later part of Korean "Police Action"

One of the other officers was Chris "Kit Horn" (google his name - mine if you so desire) while a student at UCLA he was an employee of Rene Bussoz which was called "Rene's sports shop," changed in about 1953-4 to "US Divers" and is now known as "Aqua lung."

Kit was a wealth of information well as a source of diving equipment directly from Rene at a reasonable price. by 1950s we both we both had 10 or more years of "Diving" experience using very crude often home built pieces of equipment of our own design.

Kit suggested that we make a spear gun surplus items that could be liberated from the salvage yard ...some tubing a small CO2 bottle and a rod -- presto! a
"Barada designed CO2 gas powered spear gun!" with in a few months we had enough gas guns for each of the tribe and were tired of shooting at targets in the base pool.

We had read about the 1955 Mexican-American spear fishing meet hosted by Earnesto Zarzota at a place called San Carlos, so off we go. San Carlos was totally devoid of life; dusty hot and sunny but...loaded with fish, scallops and huge Mexican conchs which we speared pried and grabbed.

We returned with chest full of sea food which we donated for a huge fish fry for our fellow airmen and became instant heroes. We repeated the trip several more times with the same results but all too soon discharges transfers and responsibilities decimated the ranks and we were no more.

In retrospect we were possibly the very first true skin divers/spear fishermen of Arizona

I returned yearly until about 1963 when trailers and homes began appearing at San Carlos.

The first dive shop in the valley was opened by NAUI instructor Boris Inocente about 1964. I knew him well and often chatted with him at NAUI functions

I thank you for generating a lot of long dormant memories with your post

Once again good luck!

Sam Miller (ex Captain USAF) (Now retired Doc)

LA co UW instructor
NAUI instructor
PADI Instructor
( and the rest of the alphabet)

 

[AZTinman]

Thanks Sam!

Your comments concerning spearfishing and diving off the coast of Sonora, Mexico in the 50's & 60's are appreciated.

We have a trip scheduled for Labor Day Weekend in the Puerto Lobos area. Given your familarity with the Northern Sea of Cortez, you may have been there a time or two. Our goal is to dive a shrimp boat wreck that's sitting on it's side in about fifty feet of water and get me in a position to photograph the wreck.

The Puerto Lobos area isn't frequented by too many divers. Tidal flows tend to generate heavy currents and poor visibility on the Northern Sea of Cortez. We're timing our dives minimize the impact of the tidal flows.

Puerto Lobos has not changed much for many years. It's still a tiny fishing village with no electricity or running water.

Not much information is readily available about diving in the Lobos area. I recently visited with Gene Foster about diving there. Like you, Gene is one of the pioneers of diving the Sonora side of the Sea of Cortez. Gene's shop, El Mar Dive Center in Mesa, is like a diving and underwater photography museum. Gene has had quite a history of building underwater housings for movie cameras. One of his old housings actually was built to house a gun camera from a WWII vintage fighter aircraft. The housing and camera are hanging there in the shop.

I asked Gene if he had ever done any diving in the Puerto Lobos area. Of course he had! He told me he had not done any diving down there for over forty years, but he had done some spearfishing there. He mentioned that he had a photograph in the shop from a trip in 1957 and took me over to a wall space between the repair shop and the scuba fins display. There on the wall was a black & white photograph of a diver standing next to a fish that was almost as long as the diver was tall. In response to my, "Geez, that's a big damn fish," Gene commented, "That guy was kinda short; he was only 5'2" tall."

I replied, "That's still a damn big fish!"

Gene told me he had the spear gun that was displayed in the Lobos spearfishing photo. I followed him back to an area adjacent to the dive center business office. He pointed to a spear gun hanging from the ceiling. He said, "That's the CO2 powered gun that he used to get that fish." He ended our conversation with something of a lament about all of the big fish like the one in the old 1957 photograph being gone.

I would have liked to have known the same Sea of Cortez that guys like Gene and you knew. It is my hope that my photography work will help other people to develop an appreciation of a place I have grown to love. People tend to want to protect places they appreciate and love.

-AZTinman

 

[Sam Miller III]

I know Gene but not well. I visited his shop on several occasion to see his collection of antique and vintage equipment. A few months agoI was in Phoenix but time did not allow for a visit.

The "WW11 gun Camera" was a common camera, it was called a GZAP camera after its military designation. Never popular because of it was a 16 MM 50, foot magazine load which made the film very expensive and limited running time to two minutes If you were lucky..

I don't recall any other divers in Arizona but our tribe while in the USAF.

more later

SDM