# WallArtsy.io — Full Site Content > Limited edition underwater fine art photography by Michael Markovina. Timed collections open for 21 days only, then close forever. Free worldwide shipping. --- ## Homepage ### Hero Fine Art Photography — Limited Collections Between Breaths — Opening Soon "It is not about looking for the perfect photograph. Not naming things allows you to see them for what they are. Those images become your understanding. You do not find the image, the moment allows you the opportunity." — Mike Markovina Free worldwide shipping. Limited editions. 21 days only. ### Pop Up Collections Each collection opens for 21 days only, then closes forever. Limited editions, free worldwide shipping. **Between Breaths** (Current Collection) A world below the world. **Wabi-Sabi** (Upcoming) The story of impermanence in fine art. **Be Part of the Decision** I have an idea going back 2 decades. --- ## About the Artist Art, like poetry, describes what words alone cannot reach. That is its only job and it is enough. I came to photography not from art school but from the ocean. Thirty years underwater. A Masters in fisheries science. Fifteen years working conservation across Africa, counting fish, writing policy, intercepting illegal vessels, sitting with data that tells a story nobody wants to hear. I have worked in eighty countries. None of that is the point. The point is what happens when you stop trying to document and start trying to feel. When you ask not what is in the frame but what the frame makes you feel. When the camera becomes irrelevant and the moment becomes everything. Art gives you permission to see magically. There is no barrier between a technically perfect photograph and a wild abstract concept, only the question of why you pressed the shutter and whether the honest answer to that question is in the image. To me that question matters more than the camera model, the technique, the depth, the equipment. It always has. I am a work in progress. I will always be a work in progress. But this creative space has given me something unexpected, a way to look at the ocean differently. Which makes me a better fisheries scientist. Which sends me back into the water. Which shows me something new. Which finds its way into the work. The ocean does not come to you. Until now. --- ## Current Collection: Between Breaths A world below the world. Where the surface ends, I stopped being a visitor and became part of what I was watching. Available for 21 days only. All prices include free worldwide shipping. ### Prints in the Collection 1. **Eternal Spirals** — $1,200 — Edition of 30 — Seascapes 2. **Fossil Light** — $1,500 — Edition of 30 — Seascapes 3. **Dancing Anemone** — $950 — Edition of 30 — Nature (Sold Out) 4. **Vigil** — $1,400 — Edition of 20 — Landscapes 5. **Depths of Light** — $290 — Edition of 75 — Seascapes 6. **Coral Garden Symphony** — $290 — Edition of 75 — Seascapes 7. **Guardian of the Stone Garden** — $290 — Edition of 75 — Seascapes 8. **Coral Metropolis** — $290 — Edition of 75 — Seascapes 9. **The Shadow Workers** — $290 — Edition of 75 — Seascapes 10. **Living Current** — $290 — Edition of 75 — Seascapes 11. **Shallow Sanctuary** — $290 — Edition of 75 — Seascapes 12. **Emergence** — $290 — Edition of 75 — Seascapes --- ## Field Notes The image is the surface. The story is what lives beneath it. Each print in the collection is accompanied by a Field Note — the story behind the image, where it was made, and why it matters. ### Field Note CO1·001 — Eternal Spirals No instruction. No beginning. Just the slow certainty of becoming. Subject: Coral Polyps · Spiral Architecture Location: North of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Depth: 20 metres These coral polyps are smaller than your fingernail. They have been building since before human memory began. No architect. No plan. Just the slow certainty of becoming. From the surface that morning I could see Zanzibar, an island built entirely by animals like these, grain by grain, spiral by spiral. This is what a million years of quiet purpose looks like. Tanzania. North of Dar es Salaam. Twenty metres down on a reef that has been building since before human memory began. These are coral polyps. Organisms smaller than your fingernail, secreting calcium carbonate in the dark, dying, being replaced, spiralling outward from a centre they cannot locate and do not need to find. No architect. No plan. Only the patient intelligence of process. From the surface that morning I could see Zanzibar. What most people do not know is that Zanzibar is not bedrock. It is limestone. Limestone is coral. The island that supports human life, that grows the cloves and coconuts, that fishers push their boats from each morning to cast nets over these same reefs, that island was built by these animals. Grain by grain. Spiral by spiral. Over millions of years of quiet, purposeful becoming. I stripped the colour from this image because colour would have given you something to admire. Black and white gives you something to understand. The form, the texture, the architecture of an intelligence that operates without thought and builds without intention, and in doing so creates the conditions for everything else to live. Chesterton wrote that the world is not lacking in wonders. Only in wonder. This is what wonder looks like when you stop looking for it. ### Field Note CO1·002 — Fossil Light We study for years to build what nature does without thinking. Every shape belongs. None of them are wrong. Subject: Coral Architecture · Form Location: Pemba Island, Tanzania One square metre of reef. More biological complexity than any computer has successfully modelled. Each plate, each curve, each layered surface the result of a living thing following nothing more than the logic of its own nature. No mistake. No deviation. Because there is no intention, only form, only the slow accumulation of what belongs exactly where it is. Nature never gets it wrong. Pemba Island, Tanzania. A reef survey mission that began looking outward and ended looking down. It is easy to be moved by scale underwater, the vast coral expanse, the schools of fish turning in unison, the open blue of the water column. We are conditioned to find wonder in the large. But the most extraordinary architecture on this reef exists in a single square metre, if you are willing to change your perspective and stay still long enough to see it. This is one square metre. These shapes have been forming for longer than our species has existed. Each plate, each curve, each layered surface the result of a polyp following nothing more than the logic of its own nature. No mistake. No deviation from intention. Because there is no intention, only process, only form, only the slow accumulation of what belongs exactly where it is. We spend years studying architecture, design, the mathematics of structure. Nature does not study. It simply becomes, and what it becomes is this. Shapes that human hands have spent centuries trying to replicate in stone, in steel, in glass. There are no ugly things in nature. We name them ugly. Nature does not. Every form is precisely what it needs to be, in precisely the place it needs to be, for reasons that predate the language we would use to question them. Stripping this image to black and white was an act of respect. Colour is distraction. Form is truth. ### Field Note CO1·003 — Dancing Anemone Every direction at once. No confusion. Just the current and the knowing that this is enough. Subject: Anemone · Symbiosis Location: Northern Madagascar Every tentacle moving in a different direction simultaneously. No confusion. No collision. Just the current, the surge, the tide, and the absolute willingness to respond to all of them at once. There is a clownfish in there somewhere, living in the one place on the reef that would kill almost anything else. It simply works. Because the relationship is real and the need is mutual. Northern Madagascar. A reef lit by surge and tide, nothing still, everything in conversation. I watched it for longer than I needed to. There is a clownfish in there somewhere. The anemone's sting would kill most things that touch it. For the clownfish it is home, the most hostile environment on the reef is the safest place it knows. No agreement was signed. No terms negotiated. It simply works, because the relationship is real and the need is mutual. I understand the anemone. The reaching in every direction simultaneously, trying to catch what is passing, trying to hold the current while managing the house, the tide, the ten things happening at once. We call that overwhelm. The anemone calls it Tuesday. The difference is the anemone does not resist its own nature. It extends fully into every direction without apology and without confusion. And somehow, in doing all of that at once, it is exactly where it needs to be. Watts would have smiled at this. ### Field Note CO1·004 — Vigil We ate the fish the reef nurtured. He stayed, unfound. Someone had to. Subject: Spot-fin Porcupinefish · Solitude Location: Dakar, Senegal Depth: 25 metres The reef was silent. Not the peaceful kind. The fish were gone, not hiding, gone. I was making notes on absence when I found him beneath a coral ledge. A spot-fin porcupinefish, motionless, watching me with an expression I have no scientific language for. We stayed with each other for eight minutes. He was not hiding. He was keeping vigil. For what we took. Dakar, Senegal. Twenty five metres. A reef that should have been alive. It was not. The coral was there, the structure, the ledges, the architecture of what had been. But the fish were gone. Not hiding. Gone. The silence was not the peaceful kind. It was the silence of a room after everyone has left and the furniture remains. I was making notes on absence when I found him. A spot-fin porcupinefish, motionless beneath a coral ledge. Not sleeping. Watching. His eye, that extraordinary, ancient eye, fixed on me with an expression I have no scientific language for and no personal language that improves on what it simply was: grief. We stayed with each other for eight minutes. I slowed my breathing so I could make the tank last, time was against me, I guess not only me. He did not move. Did not flinch. Just watched me with that eye. I have spent fifteen years in fisheries monitoring and management. I have written reports, attended conferences, presented findings. None of it prepared me for eight minutes of eye contact with the last fish on a dead reef off the coast of Dakar. He was not hiding. He was keeping vigil. For what had been. For what we took. This image is not comfortable. It is not meant to be. It is meant to be true. ### Field Note CO1·005 — Depths of Light Between the towers of light I learned to stop arriving and simply be where I already was. Subject: Kelp Forest · Cathedral Light Location: Bettys Bay, South Africa Depth: 18 metres Water Temperature: 12°C Visibility: 6 metres Eighteen metres beneath the surface, the kelp stands like a giant golden forest and the light arrives as though it chose this place. Two fish suspended in the middle of nothing and everything simultaneously. I stopped finning. The noise I carried down from the surface simply dissolved. This image does not ask you to look at anything in particular. It asks you to stop. And breathe. Bettys Bay. The kelp forests of the Western Cape hold one of the least understood ecosystems on earth. I have dived here more times than I can count and it still does this, silences whatever I carried down from the surface. At depth the kelp does not sway. It stands. Cathedral columns of Ecklonia maxima reaching thirty metres toward a surface you can barely remember. The light does not fall here, it arrives, filtered, deliberate, as though it chose this place. I stopped finning. Neutrally buoyant in the middle of nothing and everything simultaneously. The fish did not notice me. The kelp did not notice me. For a moment neither did I. This is what Watts meant. Not the idea of dissolving into nature. The actual experience of it. The noise stops not because you silence it but because something older and quieter simply absorbs it. The black and white was not a creative decision. It was an honest one. Colour would have told you what to look at. This asks you to feel where you already are. ### Field Note CO1·006 — Coral Garden Symphony Minimalism is a human preference. Nature never got the memo. Everything here belongs. All of it, at once. Subject: Coral Density · Bio-diversity Location: Zanzibar, Tanzania There is a particular kind of overwhelm that is not stress. It is the overwhelm of abundance, of something so dense with life that the mind surrenders its need to categorise and simply receives. This is that. Fish darting like fireflies through coral architecture that took centuries to build. This image does not ask you to find the focal point. It asks you to stop looking for one. Zanzibar. A reef research dive that stopped being a survey the moment I looked down. In a single square metre of this reef there are more biological interactions happening simultaneously than any computer has ever successfully modelled. Chemical signals passing between coral colonies. Symbiotic bacteria negotiating space on every surface. Fish moving through corridors of structure that took centuries to build, darting between forms that are themselves alive, feeding, competing, cooperating, all of it at once, all of it in silence, all of it appearing to us simply as beauty. We are drawn to minimalism because our minds prefer what they can hold. One clean line. One considered object. Space around a single thing. There is profound value in that. But there is equal profundity in the opposite, in the confrontation with complexity so complete that simplification becomes impossible and surrender becomes the only honest response. This image does not ask you to find the focal point. It asks you to stop looking for one. The fish are in there. The relationships are in there. The millions of years of negotiated coexistence are in there. You do not need to find them. You just need to stay. ### Field Note CO1·007 — The Shadow Workers At the top, one fish. Catching the light. Below, the reason there is a top at all. Subject: Schooling Fish · Hierarchy Location: Northern Madagascar Depth: 20 metres The shoal shaped itself into a pyramid. I did not arrange it. At the top, one fish catching the light. Below, the reason there is a top at all. I have spent fifteen years in conservation organisations. I recognised every level of this structure immediately. The difference is the fish do not resent it. They simply function. The pyramid emergent from the doing, not the planning. The outer northern islands of Madagascar. A reef that had no interest in my professional opinions about organisational structure. I have spent fifteen years working inside large conservation organisations, the NGOs, the programmes, the EU-funded initiatives with their logframes and their quarterly reports and their senior advisers who attend the conferences and collect the per diems and drift at the apex of structures built entirely by people whose names appear in no press release. The shoal is shaped like a pyramid. I did not arrange it. Nature did, because nature understands something about functional systems that our organisational charts only pretend to. The mass of fish below, moving together, direction-focused, intent, holding the formation that makes the whole thing work, are the reason there is an apex at all. And at the top, catching the light, slightly apart from the effort below, one fish. Drifting. Showing off to no one in particular. Chesterton wrote in his poem Gold Leaves of looking out at the ordinary world and finding there, in strange democracy, the million masks of God. Maybe that is the lesson. Stop looking at the apex. The sacred is in the shadow. It always was. ### Field Note CO1·008 — Guardian of the Stone Garden It did not adapt to this place. It became it. There is a difference and the difference is everything. Subject: Pyjama Catshark · Endemic Species Location: Bettys Bay, South Africa The pyjama catshark exists nowhere else on earth. Every stripe on its body is the product of a conversation between this animal and this specific ocean, conducted over millions of years. It did not arrive here. It was made here. By here. I lay on the bottom watching it watch me. Neither of us moved. At some point I stopped feeling like a visitor. Bettys Bay. The cold inshore waters of the Western Cape, where the kelp meets the boulder fields and the light falls in shifting columns through the canopy above. The pyjama catshark is endemic to South Africa. Not just native, endemic. This means it exists nowhere else on earth. Its entire evolutionary history, every adaptation, every instinct, every stripe on its body is the product of a conversation between this animal and this specific ocean, conducted over millions of years without interruption. It did not arrive here. It was made here. By here. This is what Watts meant when he said we do not come into the world, we come out of it. The catshark is not an animal living in the Cape. It is the Cape, briefly organised into the shape of a shark. I lay on the bottom for a long time watching it watch me. Neither of us moved. At some point I stopped feeling like a visitor. That is the gift this ocean gives if you stay long enough and still enough. It stops treating you like a guest. ### Field Note CO1·009 — Coral Metropolis Look at the whole and you see abundance. Look at the part and you see intention. Look long enough at either and the difference disappears. Subject: Plate Coral · Reef Ecosystem Location: Pemba Island, Tanzania Look at the whole and you see abundance. The fish shoals, the coral architecture, the productivity that feeds every fishing village within a hundred kilometres. Look at the detail and you see intention. A single polyp, secreting its calcium carbonate home with the quiet certainty of something that has never considered stopping. This reef does not know it is extraordinary. That is precisely why it is. Pemba Island, Tanzania. A coral reef research dive that asked the question every reef asks if you are paying attention, where do you choose to focus, and what does that choice reveal about you? Focus on the totality and you see outcome. The reef as a system, the coral architecture built across centuries, the fish shoals moving through it like a single breathing organism, the productivity that feeds the coastal communities above. Focus on the detail and you see intention. A single coral polyp, a few millimetres across, secreting its calcium carbonate home with the quiet certainty of something that has never considered stopping. Suzuki called this beginner's mind, the willingness to see what is actually there rather than what you expect to find. Every time I enter the water I try to begin again. Stripping the colour from this image was an act of perception, removing the layer of beauty to find the layer of truth beneath it. ### Field Note CO1·010 — Living Current No leader. No collision. Just ten thousand decisions made as one. Subject: Shoaling Fish · Collective Movement Location: Madagascar Ten thousand fish. No leader. No collision. Just instantaneous collective response to whatever the current brings next. I was neutrally buoyant above the coral head watching them divide and reform around the structure below. The blur in this image is not a technical failure. It is the truth of the moment. The moment was not sharp. It was alive. Joyful is the only honest word for it. Madagascar. A warm current moving through a reef that has been managing this traffic for longer than we have had words for management. Watts wrote that the definition of sanity is the ability to be comfortable with insecurity. Watch a shoal of fish long enough and you begin to understand what that looks like in practice. The blur in this image is not a technical failure. It is the truth of the moment, the reef slightly soft, some fish caught mid-turn, the edges of the frame dissolving into the motion of everything. I left it because removing it would have been dishonest. The moment was not sharp. It was alive. Joyful is the right word. Not peaceful, joyful. There is a difference. Peace is stillness. Joy is this, abundant, directional, collective, warm-water fast, going somewhere that does not need a name because the going is the point. ### Field Note CO1·011 — Shallow Sanctuary We look to the horizon for what lives at our feet. Subject: Shorebreak · Refracted Light Location: Northern Islands, Madagascar Depth: Ankle deep Ankle deep. The shorebreak churning above, light fracturing through the surface into something sacred. Three fish moving through refracting light with the unhurried certainty of things that belong exactly where they are. I nearly cropped the closest fish out, it was soft, slightly blurred. I left it in because it was there. The extraordinary is always closer than the horizon. Usually, it is at your feet. This is the image I return to when conservation work becomes overwhelming. When the dead reefs and the empty nets and the quarterly reports on declining biomass accumulate into a weight that is hard to carry. I return to this image and remember that life does not wait for deep water to be extraordinary. You do not need to go further out. You need to look down. The extraordinary is always closer than the horizon. It is usually at your feet, waiting for you to stop walking past it. ### Field Note CO1·012 — Emergence Moving through the darkness isn't avoiding the light. It's how you find it. Subject: Dark Shyshark · Darkness Location: Bettys Bay, South Africa Depth: 2 metres Two metres of water. The kelp forest floor. The absolute black of the water column above. I was not looking for this shark. I was simply present, and it emerged from the condition of everything being exactly as it was. The moment lasted four seconds. The image is permanent. Moving through the darkness is not avoiding the light. It is the only honest way to find it. This is a dark shyshark. Endemic to South Africa. It moves through darkness with the same unhurried certainty it moves through daylight, because it has never needed the dark to be anything other than what it is. A condition. A context. Home. Watts said that what we call the self is what the universe is doing in this particular place. Looking into that eye at two metres depth, I understood that not as philosophy, but as fact. This animal was not in the ocean. It was the ocean, briefly, looking back. The moment lasted four seconds. The image is permanent. Both are true simultaneously, and there is no contradiction. --- ## The Inner Current — Membership Not a newsletter. A private line to the work, the ocean, and the stories that don't go anywhere else. Membership closes before each collection release. ### What Members Receive **Before the Public** Members enter the collection before it opens. The earliest edition numbers are held within the Current. A collector's courtesy is extended during that window. **One Image · One Evening** Monthly live session from the studio, one image, the full story. Intimate. Direct. Limited to 30. Recorded for 7 days if you can't make it, then gone. **The Keeper** One 1/1 fine art print, exclusively yours. Each quarter, one member becomes the Keeper. Never publicly available. Never for sale at any price. **First Look** Follow the development of new collections as they take shape. See the images that didn't work, the failed attempts, the challenges behind each shoot. Have a say in what gets explored next. Membership is time-capped. Not everyone gets in. --- ## Frequently Asked Questions ### The Collection **Can I purchase an image after the collection has closed?** No. Each collection is available for 21 days only. Once the window closes it does not reopen. This is not artificial scarcity — it is a commitment to the integrity of each edition. The collection size does not increase. Ever. **Do you do archive drops of closed collections?** Only if numbered editions from that collection remain available. If a small edition of 25 still has unsold numbers at the time of an archive drop, those specific numbers may be offered. The edition size never increases and no additional prints are made beyond the original edition number. **Will you ever reprint a sold out edition?** Never. When an edition is sold out it is closed permanently. This applies to every size tier independently — a sold out large edition does not affect the availability of small or medium editions from the same image. **What is the Inner Current?** The Inner Current is the WallArtsy membership community. Members receive early access to collections before they open to the public, a discount on all purchases, monthly video calls with Mike, and access to the quarterly Keeper Contest — a 1 of 1 exclusive print that will never be sold through the main collection. Details on joining are available on the Inner Current page. ### The Prints **Where are prints produced?** Prints are produced at certified fine art labs depending on your region. South Africa orders are printed locally in Cape Town. European orders are produced at Whitewall EU. North American orders at Whitewall USA. In regions not served by these labs, orders are fulfilled by other certified fine art printers to the same archival specification. Every print regardless of origin is produced on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta to identical standards. **How long will my print last?** Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta is an archival fine art paper rated for over 100 years of display life under normal conditions. Stored correctly and kept out of direct sunlight your print is made to outlast you. **Why don't the prints fit standard frame sizes?** The images in this collection are shot natively in 4:3 and 16:9 ratios — the original proportions of the camera sensor. The image always comes first. Cropping to conform to a standard frame ratio would compromise the composition, and every image in this collection is presented in its original crop without alteration. When the museum margin is applied — a warm white border sized proportionally to each print — the final canvas dimensions do not fall on standard frame sizes. This is intentional. The warm white tone of the border is chosen specifically to complement the surface of Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta. We recommend having your print framed by a local fine art framer who can cut to the exact canvas dimensions. **Can I order a custom size print?** Prints in each collection are sized to the native specification of the camera used to create them. The Panasonic GH4 sensor produces a finite number of pixels, and the three edition sizes offered in each collection represent the optimal print dimensions at 300 DPI. We do not offer custom sizes as standard. However if you have a specific requirement we are happy to discuss it. Contact mike@wallartsy.io directly before the collection closes. **Do you offer framing?** Prints are supplied unframed. Each listing specifies the canvas dimensions to assist your framer. ### Authenticity **How do I know my print is authentic?** Every print is signed and numbered by Mike Markovina — either by hand in pencil on the museum margin for South African orders, or with a handwritten signature embedded directly in the print margin for international orders. Every purchase includes a Certificate of Authenticity stating the image title, edition number, paper specification and artist signature. A registry of all edition numbers is maintained in the WallArtsy studio. ### Delivery **How long will delivery take?** South African orders are dispatched within 10 working days of collection close and delivered within 2 to 3 weeks. International orders produced at regional Whitewall labs are typically delivered within 10 to 14 days of dispatch. All orders ship with tracking. Worldwide shipping is included in the print price. **My print arrived damaged. What do I do?** Photograph the damage immediately before handling the print further and send the images to mike@wallartsy.io with your order number. Do not return the print. If the damage is confirmed, you will be asked to destroy the print and provide confirmation that this has been done. A replacement print carrying your original edition number will then be produced and shipped to you at no cost. Your edition number is yours. It does not change. **Can I return a print if I change my mind?** Due to the limited edition nature of these prints and the production process involved, we are unable to accept returns for change of mind. --- ## The Archive A record of collections past. These editions have closed and are no longer available for purchase. --- ## Contact For any questions: mike@wallartsy.io --- ## About WallArtsy Studio WallArtsy Studio is a fine art photography studio by Mike Markovina. Every print is: - Archival giclée on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta (100+ year display life) - Signed and numbered by the artist - Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity - Shipped worldwide, free Collections operate on a 21-day window model. When the window closes, the collection closes permanently. Edition sizes are fixed and never increase. Website: https://muse-gallery-start.lovable.app Email: mike@wallartsy.io