28 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JANUARY 1-7, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com FACE TO FACE A childhood as a Navy brat took Kip F. Evans all over the world with his family, including a consequential trip to Polynesia where he went snorkeling with his brother and dad and saw a reef for the first time. That trip clinched his affection for the ocean. He got certified to scuba dive at 16 and continued to develop his technical skill as he pursued science before photography. He earned a degree in environmental studies at UC Santa Barbara, then became a research diver in the Channel Islands, spending hundreds of hours underwater surveying species. His evolution as a photographer started more incidentally. As a teen diving, he remembers that his dad (a hobbyist photographer) would run out of air first and return to the surface; he would leave his underwater camera behind with his sons. “I had a lot of early success with it, and it inspired me,” Evans says. The two worlds—diving and photography—eventually converged into a career specializing in underwater photography. He spent 12 years working with National Geographic, including five years in one-person submersibles on the Sustainable Seas project as deep as 1,800 feet below the surface. In 2016, he spent 31 days underwater off the coast of Florida as an “aquanaut” in an underwater habitat. He also volunteered with an ocean search and rescue team and participated in recovering John Denver’s remains after a plane crash near Pacific Grove in 1997. Evans lives in Pebble Beach and also keeps a fine art photo studio in the Barnyard shopping center in Carmel. Weekly: There are so many photographers who focus on nature and landscape. How do you differentiate yourself? Evans: I come from part science, part creative background. If you pull back those curtains—it might be the geology of an area—and look at more intricate details and lines, that is what inspires me, seeing beyond the colors and shapes and what everyone else sees. I start looking deeper. What do you see when you look deeper? Color, light and, in the case of ocean and wave images, power. I feel most at home when I’m in the water. I love the ocean but I’m not a diver— can you tell me about what makes diving feel different? You’re free-falling through the water column. It’s this feeling of weightlessness, like you could descend through the air, but you’re in the water. You realize you’re entering this whole new universe. How did you develop as a photographer beyond borrowing your dad’s gear? Underwater equipment is very expensive. In college, [using a lower-cost regular camera] I would go to the tide pools and spend hours photographing marine invertebrates and just get lost for hours. My key is I am always trying to make eye contact with my subjects. It’s the difference between just taking a picture and figuring out the angle to make that organism look its best, to bring it to life. Tell me about being in the one-person deep submersibles, where solo voyages would usually last three to four hours. You’d wear street clothes and dress in layers; as you go deeper it gets colder and colder. They say you could survive up to two days [with food and oxygen] but I don’t think you could mentally survive that long. One of my most amazing stories was in 1999, diving along slopes of Monterey Bay Canyon to 1,100 feet on the Fourth of July. Unbeknownst to me, it had gotten really rough on the surface and the communication box got knocked off the boat. We wait a certain amount of time and start surfacing if we haven’t heard from them. To conserve battery power I turned off my lights. In the dark, all of a sudden I start seeing these glowing, green dots turning off and on. Within 20 minutes there were thousands of what turned out to be krill, bioluminescing all around me. Was that scary or liberating? It’s a little bit of both. I was excited to be down there, you need to cherish it. You’re frightened the boat may not be above you. You joined a team living underwater for a month. How was it? The hardest part for me was even though you could see the sun at the surface, you never feel air or the sun. But you’re in this incredible place. It’s a lot like space; more people have lived in space than have lived underwater. Deep Dive Photographer Kip Evans has traveled the world capturing images, but many favorites are here at home. By Sara Rubin Kip Evans has traveled to more than 70 countries and every continent. He’s also filmed or photographed in all of the world’s oceans. DANIEL DREIFUSS Corey Want to meet Corey? Please fill out our online adoption questionnaire. Things to love: approx. 12 years old 19 pounds - male - Poodle mix Corey is gentle, affectionate, and always ready to snuggle. He greets everyone with a wagging tail and fits in beautifully with other dogs. He’s looking for a quiet home and a kind heart to lean on. If you’ve got a cozy spot and love to share, Corey is ready to be your loyal companion. If you’d like sponsor our next ad, please give us a call. 831-718-9122 | www.POMDR.org P.O. Box 51554, Pacific Grove, CA 93950 Ad sponsored by M.B.W.W.C. www.GoWhales.com
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