Chapter 11

The majority of people in the world will never scuba dive, and sharing your underwater photographs is a great way to show them some of the exotic creatures that inhabit the sea.

Whether in the Red Sea, off the Yucatán or on the Great Barrier Reef, excited newbie divers straight from their first open-water dives often ask experienced underwater photographers how best to get started taking pictures in this new environment. The advice they get is not always what they want to hear. It’s most likely to go something like this: “go away and do 200 dives and then come back and ask me again”. There is a good reason for this answer. Once you are completely relaxed in the underwater world and everything you do there becomes second nature then you may be ready for the underwater photography challenge. It’s a challenge because time is short, cameras were never meant to go underwater, greater depths dull your senses (nitrogen narcosis), make colours disappear, and fish are not good models because they rarely keep still for long enough to be photographed.

Once you become committed to photography in the briny you will be tempted to start breaking the basic dive rules, such as:

2. Running low on air because the best photo opportunities always seem to come at the very end of a dive.

3. Seeing an interesting photo subject below and then going to a greater depth than you first intended.

Try not to break the rules and try not to break the coral (perfect buoyancy control with your BCD should keep you off the fragile coral reef).

The Queen angel fish in Yucatán is very colourful and photogenic. Patience and perseverance will eventually reward you with a great shot.

Andy Belcher/APA

Wananavu. Fiji. Placing a young diver beside this beautiful crinoid-laden gorgonia fan has given the picture human interest and size. Diagonal composition also enhances the image.

Andy Belcher/APA

It’s difficult to shoot small corals while floating free. Find a bare patch to settle down on and avoid breaking delicate corals.

Peter Stuckings/APA

Careful timing and luck is needed to capture Sweetlips framing a diver on the Great Barrier Reef. Their reflectivity will require low power strobe settings.

Peter Stuckings/APA

A waterproof camera.

iStockphoto.com

Unfortunately Nikon no longer make the Nikonos underwater camera and at this stage seem unlikely to make a digital version. Your only option is either a compact camera or a DSLR in an underwater housing. One or better still two underwater flash units will bring lost colours back to life. Seawater carries many organisms which reduce visibility and make your pictures look hazy and as though snow is falling when you use flash. The best way to reduce this is to use an ultra wide lens (10.5 or 16 mm fisheye, 20 mm prime behind a dome port), get very close to your subject and mount your flashes on long flexible arms so they side light rather than illuminate snow like particles in front of the lens. Because light falls away quickly underwater upward angled shots will give you nice light from the surface. Working on manual exposure, meter the surface ambient light first and then aim a little flash, again using manual flash power settings, on to close objects in your foreground.

Use either a 60mm or 105mm macro lens behind a flat port if you want to photograph minute critters like nudibranchs or gobies. Try not to handle them. They are fragile. TTL metering usually works well for macro when there is not much light in the background.

A turtle cruising the shallows. They are usually quite speedy and difficult to photograph.