Underwater Photography 101

Back on December 25th I unwrapped possibly the best Christmas present ever; an underwater housing custom designed to fit my digital camera. It just looks sweet all on it's own as most dive gear does:

But a few weeks into the new year I was tired of just looking at my precious gift and showing it off to strangers everytime a random backpacker I met mentioned diving, so once I got to Ko Tao, a small island off Thailand's west coast remowned for it's diving, I was more than ready to take some kickass underwater shots. I was so excited that I didn't even care that the proprietor of the dive resort made me do a scuba skills review even though I have over 400 dives under my belt and I had been diving as recently as October in Madagascar and I've had my PADI Advanced certification since 1995.*

Anyway, skills review quickly dispatched we still had 1/2 hour of bottom time left so I spent the time furiously taking shots. Here are some of the early ones,

Actually these are the best of my introductory bunch which had a lot of flaws it must be said. It seems I have a tendancy to overuse the flash which led to a lot of particles showing up in my photos despite the awesome flash diffusion screen on the case. I am also inclined, probably as a result of taking so many landscape shots in the past few months, to zoom out and try to capture the entire scene which doesn't work too well underwater especially when the lighting or visibility is poor.

I did learn a few things by trial and error though. Sometimes the flash can work in your favour. Even though everything may look grey/brown as in the next photo, once a little light, or in this case a bright flash of light, is introduced into the equation you see the true colours of the undersea world shine through.

Still my shots were inconsisent at best and as the lighting conditions kept changing I was forever tweaking the settings never really confident that I knew what I was doing. Even my successes like this one,
or, diver from below


were basically good luck. For the diver from below I don't even think I was looking because I was concerned I would surface underneath him. I got to talking about some of the challenges I was facing with some of the divers on the boat** and it turned out that one of the divemasters, Chris, was teaching the underwater photography specialization and gave me a few pointers.


Later when we were talking over beers for 5 nights straight he suggested that I might benefit from the course and I told him that ever since PADI refused to recognize my 20+ logged wreck dives and declare me a 'wreck diver' I don't put too much stock in holding a specialized certification. The quality of the photos will determine whether I could call myself an 'underwater photographer'. But I had to admit that I could use some practical tips so I settled on a one day workshop.

This would explicitly help me overcome one of the biggest obstacles to good underwater photography: being rushed. For normal recreational divers the tendancy is to see as much as possible but in order to get some of the better shots (the same goes for land based photography it could be said) you have to have a lot of patience to wait for the right conditions and for the fish to come to you because chasing fish around is fighting a losing battle.

I recieved a lot of pointers about depth of field and manipulating the amount of light you let in the camera. One of the biggest pointers though was to be sure to calibrate the white balance at depth by taking a clean white slate because how your camera interprets white will influence all the other colours.Another awesome tip was to explore the effects of what on land would be an extreme close up. The effect is remarkable and some of the patterns in the coral are really unique and cool (as above) and some of the shots up close of fish are also quite cool (below).



I still need lots of practice but I've got a much better idea about what makes an interesting photo and it doesn't help to have a bright sunny day either!

Photos: 1-3) Try as we might we couldn't get the bubble ring entirely in the full frame. The challenges of a moving target while the photographer is also swaying with the waves. 4) My new toy. 5) Showing off the skills. There's really not much to it. 6) Me UW self portrait 7) Crown of thorns. Enemy of the reef. 8) Not bad for a first attempt. It looks like they are hiding. 9) Diver and reef. 10) Hey, this coral is actually red!!! 11) I like how the eyes of all the fish came out in this one. It's busy but there is still a focal point. 12) Kind of cool looking silouette from below. 13) Chris. Truly a crazy and unique individual and excellent underwater photographer. 14 -16) Coral close ups. 17-19) Fish close ups.

*Ok it sort of bothered me I mean give me a break man. It doesn't really help that I stopped keeping logs after hurricane Ivan got mine all wet and so have no actual proof of any of my alleged dives
**It is a pretty big boat and on any given day there are beginner classes, specialty classes and just recreational divers.