Open-water swimmers are a difficult lot to photograph, they don’t hang around; clad in anything from a pair of Speedo’s and a latex cap, right through to full neoprene wetsuits, sea swimmers are in the water and gone. I have attempted to swim alongside these athletes but swimming on my side whilst operating a camera, even wearing large fins, isn’t easy… and I’m not an athlete. I’m going to persevere though because I really like the images I’m getting. I class this series as a documentary/reportage body of work, so I don’t have the luxury of being able to fly off into the world of the abstract, so I think this is about as ‘conceptual’ as my work will ever get.

I made these images using my Nikonos V camera coupled with the 20mm UW lens. I’ve used Ilford Delta 3200 film rated at 800 – I’m not sure if I’ll continue using it or go back to pushed Kodak Tri-X 400. Processing and scanning by William Temple at The Latent Image.