Australia’s Tristan McCaffrey drives through a Tahitian tube while surfing in Tahiti. “Photographing out there was more difficult than I had presumed,” photographer Colin Brown said. “My first day shooting at Teahupoo was only my second time using my camera housing. Also, I was adding to the challenge by riding waves on my board while shooting to try to get unique angles.”
P H OTO G R A P H Y
H O W TO D I S CO V E R T H E U N S E E N W O R L D Elaine Whiteford, a diver as well as a photographer/writer, is quick to point out conventional underwater photography challenges, such as color absorption and backscatter. However, she adds, there are other challenges that come from being in the aquatic realm. “Composing and taking an image while hovering motionless (or, ‘maintaining neutral buoyancy’ in diver-speak) requires skill,” she said. “Controlling the camera via the knobs of an external housing, often while wearing thick gloves, does not lend itself to dynamic responses to photographic opportunities. Add
to that swells, currents, low light, poor visibility and, of course, the need to keep breathing and you will begin to understand why successful underwater photographers have to be successful divers too.” Whiteford added, “While diving has to be second nature so that you can concentrate on photography, you still have to be completely aware of your circumstances in the water, particularly how much air you have, how deep you are and how long you have been below the surface.”
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A question-and-answer session with underwater photographer and diving instructor TED KERN provides additional understanding about dealing with the challenges. QUESTION: What kind of special gear, if any, do you need to do quality underwater work? Any specific advice? Brown Gorgonian; Muricea Fructicosa Coral photo by Erica Nelson taken in Potato Harbor, Santa Cruz Island, Santa Barbara, Calif.
Matt Stamey photographed this “little yellow fish” through the glass at the North Carolina Aquarium in Manteo, N.C.
There are several good underwater cameras out there — and even more now that the digital age has fully taken hold of underwater photography. To truly take good quality underwater shots, you will need a good SLR with interchangeable lenses to accommodate for a variety of situations. This means you will need an underwater housing to put your SLR in to keep it safe from salt water, which does not mix well with cameras and electronics. There are a multitude of camera housings and styles out there. Along with your digital housing, you will need at least two underwater strobes to light the way underwater. One of the challenges is that light is absorbed by water so you have to provide your own light to gain great underwater photos. One strobe will provide light but cast a shadow, but two strobes will provide light and no directions shadow. The best advice for people wishing to jump into underwater photography comes down to a series of basic questions. 1. What kind of pictures do you want to take? Do you simply want to share pictures with your friends, or are you after the cover of a magazine? If all you want to do is show friends pictures of your adventures, stick to a point-and-shoot camera with an external strobe. If you want to take pictures that have a chance of being published, then you need to find a good DLR that you are comfortable with on land and then find a housing that will keep it safe underwater. 2. How much do you want to spend? A simple point-and-shoot underwater camera will cost anywhere between $300 and $1,500 depending on the bells and whistles that you purchase with it. As for an underwater housing and strobes, a good rule of thumb is take the cost of the SLR camera you purchased with a good lens and multiply the cost of the camera times three to get an estimate about how much you will spend on your housing and strobes. 3. What kind of room do you have for carrying gear when you travel? If you are not much for carrying cases with you when you travel, stick to the underwater point-and-shoot. If you don’t mind having more cases for your camera gear than you have clothing for your trip, then jump into the fun of underwater SLR photography. QUESTION: What is the biggest single challenge underwater photographers face? How do you overcome it?
The biggest challenge in underwater photography is buoyancy control. The most important part of underwater photography is also buoyancy control. The challenge comes from the fact that you are now in a weightless environment where the smallest current, kick of a fin or movement of your camera will cause you to move in the water column. Any movement can completely ruin a good shot. And one thing is certain in underwater photography — you have to get close to your subject. Light from your strobes will penetrate only five feet so you have to be close to the subject to get a great shot. Getting close becomes challenging underwater as things are magnified and seem closer to your eye
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underwater. You have to get even closer. Your buoyancy has to be spot on, or you will crash into the reef or your subject — and many of your subjects can hurt you more than you can hurt them. The second biggest challenge is that unless you have a lot of money and time to dive the same place over and over again to get the shot you want, underwater photography is a matter of opportunity rather than structured composition. To get that cover shot you have always dreamed of, you have to be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time when the right animal comes swimming by. All the camera preparation, your skill and your vision simply prepare you to be able to push the shutter when that moment occurs. QUESTION: If you were giving photographers who wanted to shoot their first underwater shot a piece of advice, what would it be?
Start with macro photography. You can take some unbelievable photographs with a decent camera and an underwater close-up kit. The close-up kit will have framing arms that will help you judge distance underwater. Because you know where your subject is going to be, you can already have your strobe aimed in the correct position. Then all you have to do is get close and snap the picture. It is the easiest way to gain experience and look like a pro. Then you can move on to wide-angle photography that brings infinitely more challenges. QUESTION: What do you enjoy about underwater photography? What makes it fun?
I love the challenge of underwater photography. The challenge calls forth the ability to see a shot in your head before you ever get in a position to take the shot while maintaining good buoyancy, aiming your strobes, choosing the appropriate f/stop and getting the shot before your subject moves away. What makes it fun is the hunt. You are always on the look out for unusual creatures or unbelievably breathtaking scenes. The process heightens your awareness of what is going on around you underwater and makes you a better diver. QUESTION: What should potential underwater photographers look for in a location? What kinds of locations have been particularly good or bad? How?
Those are tough questions. That is much like people asking what is the best place you have been for diving. Each place has something that makes it unique, and it is hard to quantify if one is better than the other. If you are looking for big animals and great wide-angle shots, then swimming with schooling hammerhead sharks, squadrons of eagle rays, 50-foot-long whale sharks and sea lions that grab your fins if you do not pay attention to them, the Galapagos Islands is fantastic. Or you can go snorkel with the humpback whales of the Silver Bank and take unbelievable photographs of an endangered species. Or you can go to Utila, Honduras or Bonaire to take shots of sea horses, frog fish, eels and angel fish. All places will let you come home with incredible photographs that you can adorn your wall with or submit to a magazine. In any event, the best thing to look for in underwater photography is clear water. Turbid water is hard to shoot in as the strobes will light up the particulate in the water. The shear density of particles between you and your subject will make your pictures dark and colorless.
TOP Patrick Murphy, dive safety officer for the North Carolina Aquarium at Roanoke Island, explores the aqurium’s environment. Photo by Evan Semon. BOTTOM “I like this photo,” photographer Brooke Schnetz said, “because it shows good diver positioning and depth of field.” This was shot with a Nikonos V and a 20mm lens along with a 102 Nikonos strobe off California’s San Clamente Island.
UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY uwpmag.com
Underwater Photography is a free ezine produced in England. Each issue, supported by various vendors, includes pages of articles on helpful subjects: • Underwater photo techniques — Balanced light, composition, wreck photography, etc • Locations — Photo friendly dive sites, countries or liveaboards • Subjects — Anything from whale sharks to nudibranches in full detail • Equipment reviews — Detailed appraisals of the latest equipment • Personalities — Interviews with leading underwater photographers Peter Rowlands, peter@uwpmag.com Ivybridge, England
QUESTION: Why is light one of the complications of underwater photography? How do you overcome the lighting challenges?
Light is definitely a big challenge in underwater photography. Water filters the light as you descend in depth so you lose the natural light of color. Water FALL 2007
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Surface 5m 90 percent loss of red light 10m Loss of orange light 15m Loss of yellow light
In poor visibility, my dive buddy Lance and I swam aimlessly while looking for a suitable subject to photograph. As I was starting to get bored, a large school of mackerel swam into view. Driven by excitement, Lance rushed toward them, twisting and firing away with his automatic digital camera. I shot the scene with available light. The sun illuminated the blue water from above, its light dissipating with the depth of the sea and contrasting against the silhouette of the diver and fish. Photo by Nancy Wong. I found this soupfin shark at San Clemente Island, Calif. I shot this picture with a Canon 10D in a Sea & Sea underwater housing with two underwater strobes (Sea & Sea YS-90). These sharks are quite shy with divers. When they see bubbles produced by a diver’s exhalation, they swim away fast. To get this photo, I literally held my breath, swam toward the animal and surprised it as I approached it from behind a wall of seaweed. Photo by Dan Sullivan.
25m Loss of green light
40m Loss of blue light Rough water absorbs more light whereas smooth water reflects more. In the tropics, the sun stands straight overhead at midday, so there is little loss of light. In temperate seas during winter, the light diminishes by as much as three f/stops right under the surface.
absorbs the photons from light as it travels from the sun. Even in the clear water of the open ocean, less than 25 percent of the surface light reaches a depth of 10 meters (33 feet). At 100 meters (330 feet) the light present from the sun is about 0.5 percent of that at the surface. Water filters the colors in the same order of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). Reds, oranges and yellows are gone in about the first 20 feet of water. Because most subject matter photographers shoot is generally between 40 and 80 feet below the surface, you are left with a lot of blues in the water. Digital photography has brought a new technique for us in white balancing. You can take a white slate down in the water. Before taking the picture, light balance the camera at depth so you are shifting the color spectrum to make the camera see colors in the water. When you use this technique, you can actually take underwater pictures without strobes. Although the technology has progressed during the past five years, it still cannot do the same as pointing two large, hot strobes at your subject matter to bring the color spectrum back to normal for your camera to imprint. To minimize the impact of absorption underwater, get the light source close to the subject (to cut down absorption on the way) by using underwater flashguns to provide a close white light source. Then move the camera close to the subject (to cut down absorption on the way back) by using wide-angle or macro lens. n
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Equipment
ONE LUCKY ANEMONE FROM TED KERN — One great story happened in Roatan, Honduras. This is well before there were affordable digital cameras to take underwater and fewer housings to put them in. I was shooting with a Nikonos IVA set up for macro photography after a week of diving to go out for a night dive. We were staying at Anthony’s Key Resort, which has rooms on stilts above the water on a small island off the main island and a boat that shuttles you back and forth to the main part of the hotel. The dock where the boat pulled in had a little sandy area under it that, with the light of the dock on, showed a small sea anemone that would come out and feed each night. Every morning the anemone rolled back under the dock and hid. Then every night he was back on the sandy area feeding away. Every night we said good night to our little anemone before we went off to bed. Every morning he was hiding. On our last night of diving, I came back up from a disappointing photo shoot with plenty of film left in the camera. Since we have seen this little guy every night for six nights, I decided to take a picture of him. The depth of the water was barely enough to get my lens wet with the extension arm on it so I fired off only one picture. It is still one of the best pictures I have ever taken with the anemone feeding himself with great depth of field and sharp focus of the subject. The picture, the first that my wife had blown up to give to me for a birthday present, still hangs above our fireplace. I tell every class and everyone I teach underwater photography the moral of the story: “It is better to be lucky than good when it comes to underwater photography.”
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Although it is possible to buy a camera made specifically for underwater photography, most photographers choose to shoot underwater by putting a traditional camera into a watertight underwater housing. Manufacturers, such as Canon and Nikon, make such housings. Other manufacturers market housings for a wide variety of cameras. Such housings can cost from about $200 for point-and-shoot cameras, such as the Canon PowerShot, to $3,000 or more for higher-end digital cameras, such as the Canon 30D. Underwater housings are outfitted with control knobs that access the camera inside to give the photographer use of most of its normal functions. The housings also have connectors to attach external flash units because the housing will block any flash on the camera itself. In practice, underwater photographers use either wide-angle lenses or macro lenses, both of which allow close focus, thereby eliminating the need to have excessive water between the camera and the subject. Because of refraction through the plastic housing, the image coming through the glass port will be distorted. To reduce the distortion, manufacturers make the front piece dome-shaped or shaped to work with a specific lens. UNDERWATER FLASH Because of the lack of light underwater at all but the shallowest depths, supplementary light is almost a necessity and is often regarded as the most difficult aspect of underwater photography. The light from the flash should supplement the overall exposure and restore lost color. It should not be the primary light source. Backscatter, when the flash reflects off dirt or plankton in the water, also necessitates being close to the subject and having the lights at an angle, not coming from the same direction as the camera’s lens. Rough water absorbs more light whereas smooth water reflects more. In the tropics, the sun stands straight overhead at midday and results in little loss. In temperate seas during winter, the light diminishes by as much as three f/stops right under the surface. COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY • 27