My Inner Peace by Charly Rusconi

Good day guys,

Thanks for having me. 

I am Charly Rusconi, a 31 years old professional skydiver and ocean photographer born and raised on the South West coast of France. However, I call Australia home now. After obtaining my Masters in Criminal Law and joining the Special Officers School of Saint Cyr where I graduated as an Infantry Lieutenant, I decided to leave everything behind to pursue my dreams of skydiving and travelling.

I got to Australia in September 2014 where I became a professional skydiver. I do tandem jumps for a living and I also compete around the World in a discipline called Canopy Piloting (been in the Aussie National team for the last 4 years). My skydiving journey and my love of surfing brought me to Wollongong, coastal town about an hour south of Sydney, that I now call home and where my photography journey started.

I remember getting a small digital camera at the age of 14 and I started shooting random stuff: flowers, chairs, weird objects or family members. I had no idea whatsoever of what I was doing and I thought my pictures were terrible (which they were) and never touched a camera again until last July.

I met my partner last July and she forced me out of bed to go and watch the sunrise. She had, and still has, a DSLR camera and would capture the sunrise every morning on the same beach after ordering the same coffee from the same coffee shop. I was amazed by the different pictures and mood and compositions she could get out of the same place. When I asked her: How do you do it? She simply replied: I just point and shoot! I was hooked and ready to give photography another crack. So I bought a second hand 600D, watched hundreds of hours of youtube tutorials and off I went.

My love of surfing made me wonder if I could take my camera into the water. And guess what? My partner knows the one and only Warren Keelan. She introduced me to him at his gallery in Wollongong and after looking at his art and chatting to him I knew ocean photography would become a part of my life. I came home that day, put my 600D up for sale and looked for a full frame camera and a water housing. Since August last year, I have been shooting in the water pretty much every day with my 5D3 and my Aquatech water housing. I AM HOOKED!!!

I love the combination of light and water and the power of the waves crushing into the shore. I wanna capture the beauty and power of the ocean in a single shot. I am really inspired by the work of Warren and his abstract shots mixing light and water. There are so many good photographers out there that I admire and get inspiration from like Ben Thouard, Clark Little, Ray Collins, Corey Wilson or Philippe Thurston just to name a few.