Exposing Beneath The Waves.

Stepping off the back of the boat, my fins hit the water with a loud slap and then I was in, the cold water rushing in the zip making me shiver. The underwater world revealed itself and I could already tell it was going to be a great dive. As I descended onto the rocky bottom, camera in hand, I peered through the perspex back to check for any leaks and despite having tested the housing, let out a sigh of relief to see the camera was, at least for now, dry. This was my first dive with a camera since my previous one filled with sea water, so I had been waiting with nervous excitement to get in the water. When I reached the bottom I decided my first port of call was to mess around with the settings, and so this is what I did, I found a comfortable rock and sat there fiddling with my camera, confident I could nail my first exposure. This is that exposure.

1/125th sec at F8.0 ISO 800 18mm

As you can see I was wrong, underwater photography was going to be harder than I had anticipated, so I set my camera to auto and swam off in search of subjects. As I passed over a patch of seaweed I saw a small jellyfish and so turned my lens at it. Slow moving and easy to isolate from the background this was a perfect opportunity.

1/200th sec at F8.0 ISO 800 29mm

Yet again the picture is a flop. Blown out, blurred and flat, so far this dive was turning into a lesson on how not to take underwater photos but I persisted. What followed were a series photos which I will spare you the discomfort of seeing, but which were not much better than my first two with cluttered compositions and blown out highlights. However, unperturbed, I continued to persevere and went off in search of my next victim. I quickly found a shoal of barracuda and decided that the best composition was to get them against the clean background of the surface. Despite my failures at doing this earlier I thought I had it sussed.

1/125th sec at F8.0 ISO 800 18mm

Yet again the nuances of underwater photography evaded me. This is a truly awful picture, it manages to be both overexposed, underexposed and have very little contrast. It was at this point I decided to reassess my theory so start shooting horizontally and not directly at the sun.

1/250th at F8.0 ISO 800 18mm

As you can see this produced better results, there is more contrast in the image and none of it was blown out. The white balance was still way off but baby steps was the name of the game at this point. This image is by no means compositionally perfect either, 2 of the barracuda overlap, the fish off to the right are distracting and they aren't on a clean background. This was however a step in the right direction and would be the (albeit slightly shaky) foundations from which I constructed my loose collection of theories that I have termed "know how". What I plan to post in the following blogs is a series of stories, examples and tips for underwater and above-water photography in a vague attempt to persuade you to buy some of my prints or hopefully in the future, a book. If you didn't enjoy this you can sign up for monthly emails where I will send tips, tricks and examples without all of the pointless waffle. If you did, thank you, this is intended to be a beginners guide to photography for those who find 500 page epics on the subject a little heavy going. Bear in mind though that you cannot learn everything about photography by reading a book, watching videos or attending talks, by far the best method is to get out and use your camera.