A Few More Manta Photos

[Mike Veitch]

Seeing as i didn't go diving today thought i would share a few pics with everyone from the last couple of weeks

enjoy

 

[Azotomix]

It's already beautiful see one manta flying! Getting 5 of them...
Really nice pics.

 

[orangeBloke]

Beautiful pictures Mike, absolutely beautiful

 

[gabyne]

awesome... Oh, I'm longing for going diving again soon...

Gaby

 

[PapaBob]

I can never get my sun silhouette shots looking like yours. Great work as usual Mike.

---Bob

 

[mjh]

Incredible shots.

 

[scubaculture]

Great pics! Manta Rays are amazing to watch

Some shots from Mozambique:

http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php/ppuser/27927/cat/500

 

[PapaBob]

Seeing as i didn't go diving today thought i would share a few pics with everyone from the last couple of weeks

enjoy

Mike:

I love your manta shots. I have been diving S. Florida for years and I have never seen a devil ray underwater (only about 3 surface sightings and me without my SCUBA). What amazing stuff. Please keep posting.

I have been playing with some advanced Photoshop masking techniques including “channel masks” where you use the channels feature in Photoshop to help create a mask. It worked great on your mantas so I decided to darken the mantas to create a sharper silhouette on one layer, and use the mask so that only the darkened mantas would appear in the composite image. On a separate layer I used a curves adjustment layer to boost the contrast between the background water and sun. This is what I came up with.

I saved the file as a PSD so I can rework any aspect of it. For example, I could soften the mask by applying a gaussian blur filter to it if the edges look too sharp.

I hope you don’t mind my working with your shot as I really helps me sharpen my Photoshop skills and gives me some great ideas regarding my future UW shots.

I have said this before, but you do much better than I shooting silhouette shots. I can never get the sun and water exposed just right, but your results will keep me trying. I also like the vignetting around the photo edges which helps draw attention to the mantas. This could be enhanced in Photoshop, but does not need much of a tweak (I left it alone in the posted image).

Thanks again for sharing your shots!

—Bob

 

[cdiver2]

Great shots Mike My wife and I will be there at the end of Oct what is it like for Manta sightings then
thanks
David