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told that they are the only one in the group, and
everyone else is there to provide support. The
organisation might be missing out on dive income
in the process, so the pressure is on to deliver. It
might flatter your ego, but such opportunities
don’t come along that often.
In a series of images shot off Catalonia, the
yellow gorgonians are interesting and contrast
well with the blue, but the presence of a diver
leads your eye into the frame (4).
His torch adds a little mystery, perhaps, and
suggests that he’s uncovering something not easily
seen. The reader might not even know that the
only useful illumination is coming entirely from
my strobes.I
HAVE YET TO MEETa professional underwater
photographer who doesn’t edit images to some
extent. I think of post-processing as restoring an
image to how we recall the experience.
Take backscatter. The strobes create the
problem and so removing it is entirely justifiable(though often a laborious process with the spot-
healing tool), as is correcting exposure, white
balance, contrast and the other adjustments
shooting in RAW allows.
Where image manipulation moves to the next
level is in removing or reworking elements of the
original image.
This shot (5)was taken on a famous reef wall in
the northern Red Sea. It’s hundreds of metres
down to the seafloor and the small silhouette of
my buddy works to show how insignificant a
single diver is against the scale of the reef.
A narrow aperture creates a sunburst and
retains the blue of the sea and the shoals of fish
are lovely. But look at his left leg! It would look so
much better with both legs side by side; in
another version, that’s what I’ve done.
In another image (6) I’ve taken it a little further- with this shoal of fusiliers sweeping down a reef
face I’ve cloned out another diver to create a
simpler but bolder image. Digitally adding more
fish, a passing turtle and a shark or two would be
wrong and would misrepresent the location.
Is this acceptable? I’d be morally wrong to enter
a deceptive image into a competition, but I don’t
feel I’m selling the location short, as it’s the
transitory human presence I’m altering. You
might not agree!
The hardest shots to capture are people
interacting with wildlife. Above your own
concerns of monitoring gauges, computers and
camera settings, factoring in the comings and
goings of other divers and often skittish animals
adds a further level of complexity.
The easiest technique is hardly an interaction at
all and just relies on good fortune in managing to
capture divers in the frame while shooting
something else. In this image of the red bubbletip
anemone in the Red Sea, the shot is almost exactly
what I used to try to avoid (7).
Another shot (8) fell into my lap. Using a very
wide-angle lens at 10mm I could get a close focus
on this anemone and resident clownfish. Seeing
a pair of divers passing from the right, I managed
to combine all the elements. Ideally the closest
fish wouldn’t have a tentacle across its snout.A
MORE CHALLENGINGshot involved two
angelfish, a turtle and another photographer
(9). This image taken in a marine reserve off the
Yucatan almost didn’t happen.
I spotted the large angelfish first as they were
busy grazing algae from the shell of a turtle as it
rested up on the reef. Slowly I moved around the
turtle almost 180° to get a cleaner shot of it.
Spotting me, another photographer moved in
but, rather than detracting from the image,
I think she adds that “this could be you” moment.
The frogfish opposite (10)is so confident in its
camouflage that it hardly moves. The diver is just
under-exposed enough to appear to throw him far
to the back of the image.
Where fish are a little less skittish life is much
easier, though careful use of aperture and strobe
illumination is required to correctly expose the
foreground subject, as well as adding enough light
to the rear subject to show what’s going on
without detracting from the overall image.
Sometimes the human is not just an additional
element, but the main story.
On a trip to the Caribbean I learned about the
impact non-native lionfish were having as they
chomp through the native fauna. In response,
dive-centres regularly hold lionfish hunts and
tournaments, often accompanied by barbecues.
Here (11) the diver has speared and quickly
killed the fish and is about the remove its
venomous fins with a pair of scissors.
You can’t tell that we were in a strong current,
and it took me several passes to get the shot. I’d
fin like crazy to get upcurrent, then spin round
and fire the trigger as I sped past.
Luckily, we were in shallow water, so I had
plenty of gas and could take my time.
Only in the shallows can you shoot successfully
without strobes, and even in the tropics
additional illumination is usually necessary below
a few metres, not just to illuminate shadows but
to add wavelengths of light lost as they are
absorbed by the water.(^56)
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