As a synchronized swimmer, your soundtrack is like this: noise, then silence, noise, then silence, noise, then silence. Half the time, you're above water, and half, you're underwater, in another realm, where the splashing is muffled, the light is filtered and shadowy, and everything is different. It's true that when you're doing a routine to music, you can hear the music coming from the underwater speakers. But even the music comes to your ears through the water's field of silence, like it's coming from far away.

These photographs of synchronized swimmers underwater, taken in the Czech Republic, get at what it's like to be in that other realm. I love that they were taken by a nearsighted guy who doesn't have contact lenses, so he couldn't entirely see what he was getting. He had to feel his way. The water—look at the way its patterns dominate the second photograph down—is as much a character as the swimmers, and the color of the photographs is such that they almost look like negatives, inverses of pictures, which is really sort of right.

^{Thanks for the tip, DVS!}