Last week GoPro and the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, commonly known as PADI, made an announcement in Las Vegas, Nevada about their new collaboration.
Founded in 1966, PADI is the world’s largest recreational diver training organization that offers divers an underwater photography course and certification. The collaboration was announced at the Dive Equipment and Manufacturer’s Association show, one of the largest scuba diving trade shows in the world.
The two juggernaut brands are teaming up to help scuba and free divers around the world share their underwater adventures with non-divers. They hope their new collaboration will help to inspire more ocean lovers to create stills and videos to raise awareness about the underwater realm. It is not yet clear how exactly they will go about their new collaboration, as they explained they are still in the midst of developing it, but PADI announced they will be providing GoPro with “tools and tips specifically designed for divers to facilitate superior shooting and editing techniques.”
PADI CEO Drew Richardson, Gregg DiLeo of GoPro, and PADI Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer Kristin Valette-Wirth.
Kristin Valette-Wirth, the Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer of PADI Worldwide, explained, “GoPro and PADI have a common vision to enable exploration, push boundaries, forge new paths and share experiences through imagery, video and technology. Together, we want to ensure that memories made while diving can be preserved and shared with friends, family and millions of others around the world.”
The announcement came moments before GoPro reps tossed out free Hero 7s to a keen crowd of diving professionals. It should be interesting to see what the two well-respected organizations can create together.
Image used with permission from PADI. Copyright Karl Shreeves.
Cool...maybe I can cash outta my stock after the holidays :-)
I so wish I had modern gear when I dove the most in film days :)
taught scuba for 15 years (PADI) and around 15k dives in my life :)
especially when I was working in Truk lagoon etc..
Yeah, but if you hadn't acquired the discipline to shoot with film, you wouldn't have been as confident in the digital age. ;-)
Not really sure what PADI is getting out of this, unless GoPro is throwing money their way. Getting new divers to start shooting underwater out of the gate is a dangerous way to be as a new diver, because there's a lot of important life support skills you need to get under your belt first. Not sure that would really be beneficial to PADI in the long run.
Yeah, don't really know much about that kind of stuff with these organizations. I know PADI is more popular for some reason (I'm NAUI certified), but I think certification is a bit to simplified overall nowadays. I've seen same day certification recently, which strikes me as almost guaranteed to make sure you float back up from your first dive...