Fish & Reef Shots

[sabbath999]

Hi, new here.

I do both land and underwater photography. I am strictly amateur, no pro stuff at all (with the exception of sports which I shoot for the local newspaper and don't plan on posting here).

I thought I would start out with a few of my most recent underwater shots from Kona, Hawai'i.

[Hayward Taylor]

Aloha and welcome ... these are National Geographic quality images .. so clear and crisp .. wow

[vikingforlife44]

My goodness those are so cool. What great shots. We're heading to Hawaii in Feb. Hope to try snorkeling and see what is down there ourselves.

Nice job.

[sheltiesmama]

Beautiful shots, tho that first one would have had me heading the other direction in a hurry.

[brpowell]

Those are amazing shots.

[sabbath999]

Originally Posted by sheltiesmama

Beautiful shots, tho that first one would have had me heading the other direction in a hurry.

Thanks... but that is a macro shot... that little fella is only about four inches long (although they can grow as long as a foot. He is an orange lipped lizardfish (the males have brighter lips, that's how I know it is a "he").

Not really very scary at all

[windrider86]

Stunning images!!

[StellaG]

Wow, very nice! It must be very interesting to take underwater shots...Is it hard to do?

Betty

[sabbath999]

Originally Posted by StellaG

Wow, very nice! It must be very interesting to take underwater shots...Is it hard to do?

Betty

Well... that's kind of a tough question to answer. It is complex, certainly... whether it is hard kind of depends on your SCUBA diving experience level.

I think perhaps the easiest way to answer you is to give you a workflow of what went into making these shots on my last dive trip.

I use a camera with a dual strobe system (a Sealife DC1000 to be exact, an underwater point & shoot... although I am going to transition to DSLR in the next year... I have several DSLR's but no underwater housings or strobes to fit them). To get the camera ready, you basically have to charge all the batteries and get the memory card ready to go. Then, you put desiccants in the strobes and the underwater case. You remove the main watertight seals on the flashes, clean off any dirt and sand (most seals also get lubricated with silicone grease, but Sealife seals don't use this method) and you carefully seal up the camera so that it doesn't leak.

Next, you carry all your gear to the boat. You get on the boat, and drop your camera equipment in a tank of fresh water. That is where it lives for the entire trip when not under the sea. You gear up with all your scuba gear, doing your pre-dive checks and checking out your buddy. When you get to the dive site, you giant stride into the ocean, and swim back to the boat to have them hand your camera gear down to you. You then meet up with your buddy and descend. As you are descending, you look at the camera and flashes for any signs that the cases are leaking... and you power everything up and take a picture (that way you can use time stamps and compare them to your diving computer log so you can see how deep you were when you took each shot). You also check to make sure there are no bubbles on the lens housing.

If you are in a group of divers, you then meet up with them and the divemaster and start off on a tour (this is what most people do, at least in Hawai'i). There are people of all different skill levels on the dives, so you have to watch out for the other divers as well as your buddy, making sure nobody gets into trouble. My wife and I are both Rescue Diver certified, and a lot of the people we dive with are... well... not very good at diving, so we kind of keep an eye on them as much as we can.

The divemaster will swim around to the various highlight spots on the reef, and show the occasional animals that he or she finds... and the whole group of people (anywhere from 4-12) will generally swim over and ogle the critter. The divemaster may well take the group down to 80 or 90 feet, which is a very bad zone for taking pictures, so generally on the deeper portions of the dive unless I see something that is macro I just turn the flashes off and wait.

After about 20 minutes, one of the less experienced divers will generally hit the half way point on their air, and everybody will turn back towards the boat, working their way towards the shallows. As the heavy breathers (people who go through their air the fastest... generally the most inexperienced divers) go do their safety stops and go topside, the rest of us can hang around in the shallows and look at corals or critters or whatever.

To actually take a picture, something like the lizardfish or the eel I have posted here, this is what is involved. First, you have to find the critter hiding in a hole or wherever. Then, you have to swim over to it without scaring it off. You must hang in the water with perfect buoyancy because touching the coral is a BIG no-no... and if you get too light well then you will float off and away from the critter. You can't skull around with your hands because A) the camera is in your hands and B) you would stir up a lot of particles which would ruin your picture anyway. So, to take the shot you get your buoyancy all set up, then you get to set up your lighting (the flashes must be centered properly) and get your exposure set up as well (I shoot mostly manual on my flashes), then you get to compose the shot and take the picture... while all this is going on, you also have to be watching out for your own buddy, making sure that he or she isn't getting into trouble... you have to keep track of how much air you have remaining in your tank, what your no-decompression time left is, where the rest of the group is and you have to watch your navigation so you know where the boat is as well (since it will most generally be out of sight).

And now, we get to add in both current and surge. Surge is something that rocks you back and forth, and sometimes near the shore it can be really strong... I have made shots where I am in surge where I basically wait until the hole with the fish in swings by my face (actually, it is me that is moving but it feels like you are still and the world is moving around you), shoot, and then let it take me past the hole... on the way back by I shoot again going in the other direction. Current is different, it is just a constant pull against you.

The seascape shots are easier, I just set the white balance, turn the flashes off and take the picture.

Anyway, as the dive ends, I head back to the boat and hang out at 15 feet for at least three minutes (a nitrogen reducing safety stop) and I will often shoot a bunch of seascapes while I am hanging out there.... then, swim back up to the boat, hand off the camera to a crewman, take off my fins and climb aboard... until the next dive.

Once we have dove with an outfit a day or two, we generally talk to them about us going our own way... we just drop off the boat and hang out not far from the anchor line, searching in all the small holes for critters... most dive operators in Hawai'i like to keep their groups together (the divemasters get to do quite a bit of babysitting of newer or inexperienced divers) but sometimes we can talk them into letting us be by ourselves.

When you are done for the day, you grab the entire rig and take it back to where you are staying, and very carefully wash down the entire system making sure you clean all the buttons. Then, you leave it to completely dry. Once it is completely dry (generally a couple hours later), you open the flashes and the camera case, pull all the batteries and recharge them, then pull out the memory card and replace it with a new one. Because of the chances of flooding, I never reuse cards on the trip. What I do next is to take the card, put it in a card reader, then dump all photos on it into my online account at zenfolio so that I will have a permanent backup of them. I don't edit anything until I get home.

Is this hard? Well, it certainly is complex. After doing it for a while, though, I wouldn't say it is hard... it is just a lot of effort.

The key to being a good underwater photographer isn't having excellent photographic skills... it is being a good diver. If you can't keep your position in the water column rock steady, then you can't (or shouldn't, for the sake of the health of the coral) take underwater pictures that will look like anything.

The rest is simple photography skills that we all know... composition, lighting, post processing, etc. Anybody can do that stuff to at least a competent level with a bit of practice.

[ukglyn]

Awesome underwater work, I dive also & have tried to get some shots with a point & shoot digital in a housing so know how difficult it is. yours are perfect, thanks for sharing.

Glyn