I went in one day with my Pentax 35 mm camera and tripod with a wide angle lens, and using very long time exposures, carefully photographed each window, making sure that the edges of each frame were not in the image, and that there were no reflections off the glass windows. As it turned out, the pictures that resulted were quite realistic.

About this time, I had just received as a present a small underwater camera; pressure sealed, it was guaranteed to work in at least 15′ of water. It was fixed-focus, fixed-exposure, fixed-aperture, had a small built-in flash and used 110 film cartridges. It was great for snapshots under water, but not a particularly sophisticated image maker, except for its amphibious capabilities. I made a big deal of showing this camera off to the geologists I worked with at the lab, and I promised them I would bring them back some underwater pictures when I went down to the Florida Keys on vacation that winter.

I guess you can see this coming, right? I did use the camera while snorkeling in the keys, and the pictures, particularly of my pretty new bride frolicking on the reef, came out swell. But my color pictures from the museum had been developed by the time I came back, and I ceremoniously showed them to the geologists after I returned to work.

“Hey guys, here are the pictures I took while snorkeling down in the Keys. Lots of neat critters down there, check it out!”

The effect was exactly what you might imagine. These guys were paleogeologists, we all worked for an oil company, they were quite familiar with the creatures in the photographs. I let them play with the pictures all day before I told them just what they were really looking at.

I’m not one for practical jokes, but I do believe this one was particularly creative. They never forgave me.

Nestled in the badlands of southern Alberta, the Royal Tyrrell Museum is one of the finest of its kind. Some movie-making buddies of mine helped with the Burgess Shale exhibit.