Alain Bernard of France is seen from underwater as he enters the water to set a new world record of 47.60 seconds during the 100m freestyle in the men’s semi-finals at the European Swimming Championships in Eindhoven March 21, 2008 (Photograph by: Wolfgang Rattay).

It is of course not possible for a photographer to be in the pool during a swimming competition, but that doesn’t stop a determined photographer getting the picture!

I have worked on this problem over a number of years, and got it down to a fine art. It is necessary to pre-position an underwater housing containing a regular Canon EOS 1D Mark 2N with (usually) a 15mm fish-eye lens. When the swimmers hit the water or swim over my camera, I release the shutter via a waterproof cable. The data is transferred from the camera to another housing containing a Canon transmitter that transfers the images from the camera to my laptop.

Above: Setting up my equipment at Eindhoven

Within seconds of the end of the race I am in a position to transmit the photographs to our desk operation in Singapore. The desk then immediately moves them globally.

Above: Setting up my equipment at Eindhoven

The underwater pictures of Alain Bernard were out on the wire four minutes after the Frenchman set a new world record over the 100m freestyle. In my mind this is a world record too, because I appear to be the only photographer – using a remote controlled underwater camera like this – who has worked out how to achieve consistent results with this notoriously unreliable set-up. Therefore I don’t need to wait for a couple of hours for the competition to end before jumping into the pool to retrieve my CF card, as do the other photographers

In the competitive world of sport photography, just like the swimming competition, seconds count. An hour is a life-time.

Above: At the end of the day, washing off the chlorine in my bathtub.