The versatile, lightweight design of GoPro cameras has made them a staple in the travel kits of many keen photographers. With an impressive level of durability and easy-to-use interfaces, they’ve upped the possibilities of how travel and adventure experiences can be captured on film.
Often, GoPros are associated with adventure activities, like mountain biking, parkour or diving. The wide, fish-eye lens creates an immersive quality and brings viewers closer to the action. They’re usually strapped to an adrenaline junkie’s chest or helmet, while they barrel down hills, skydive from a plane or swim through the ocean depths.
In the years since the release of the camera, a new genre of travel content has made its way onto the internet. Videos titled with ‘I dropped my GoPro’ uploaded through the early 2010s tended to capture accidental fumblings of swimmers, snorkelers and divers, with cameras plummeting to the sea floor and filming fish, rubbish and seaweed floating by before their eventual retrieval.
However, a refreshed version of the genre now seems to be emerging on YouTube. Curious camera operators have started to attach fishing lines to their GoPros, before intentionally dropping them into the ocean. There are videos where people have cast GoPros off the sides of ships, dunked them near wharves and dropped them down mysterious wells or holes.
