Sofie Louca and Paul Karaolides A.K.A. Fish Bowl Diaries are award winning photographers, recognized as some of the top shooters in the windsurfing industry. Until very recently, the couple have been based in the UK but have just moved to Maui full time to be closer to the island that has inspired so much of their work. To find out more about the talented duo, we caught up with Sofie to learn about their life, photography and how they came up with the ‘Fish Bowl’ moniker!
WS – How did your photography career start?
SL - Strangely enough, my very first encounter with a ‘real’ camera, before I even knew anything about photography, was shooting windsurfing back in the mid 90's when we first went to Maui!! Ironic, huh! In the early 2000's I took a photography course and both Paul & I have been shooting professionally for over 15 years. We started with film, spending hours in the darkroom before moving over to digital and knuckling down to learning Photoshop!
Long story short in 2011 we ended up on Maui for three months and by the end of it I had hundreds of windsurfing photos which I didn’t know what to do with so after a little thought I decided to set up an interview website whereby I would feature my images and interview the wind surfers. The website was a success and by the next year I set up Fish Bowl Diaries on Facebook (www.facebook. com/fishbowldiaries), little knowing how popular it would become and how well known Paul and I would become within the industry for our work. Depending on what I’m posting, our weekly reach on Facebook is anything from 20,000 to an incredible 375,000.
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