First attempts at underwater photography

[Marcus Wendel]

Hello all,

I've just returned from St Lucia where I took my first steps into the world of underwater photography. Obviously I have little idea about what I am doing at this stage but I've created a simple blog where I have posted some of the photos and videos I took and I would appreciate some feedback and suggestions on what to work on but keep in mind that I am very much a beginner and am finding it difficult do to the most basic things
The address is http://www.divingiguana.com/

I am using a Sea&Sea DX-GE5 with the flash Sea&Sea YS-Q2 and so far I have done no editing of the photos other than changing the size.

/Marcus

 

[TSandM]

So you do have a strobe?

I like the next to the last picture the best, because it is shooting up. The sponge in the foreground gives additional interest and scale. But, like almost all the photos, it's too blue . . . this can be because the white balance is off, but is more likely to be because you aren't close enough to the subject for the strobe light to bring out the colors.

One of the things I was taught, early on, was when you think you are close, get CLOSER. Strobe power falls off by the inverse square law -- and strobe light is subject to the same rules of absorption as sunlight is. If you are more than a couple of feet away from your subject, you won't have a lot of power on it, and a lot of the red and yellow light will be absorbed in the path to the subject and back to the camera.

Welcome to underwater photography! I was extremely reluctant to pick up a camera, but I've found that photography is like cave diving . . . you can never feel truly GOOD at it, because it could always be better. It's a huge learning curve, like learning to dive in the first place, and it's a lot of fun.

 

[Marcus Wendel]

Thanks for the comments. I don't have a strobe, apart from the camera and flash mentioned above I just used a flash light during the night dive.

I have decided to get Adobe Photoshop Elements, with that software I should be play around with some improvements on the white balance without having to pay for the full Photoshop. I'll replace some of the very blue photos currently on the blog and even with the auto setting it is really a great improvement from the originals, thanks.

What can be done to minimize this effect while taking photos apart from getting closer?

The suggestion about coming closer sounds like a very good suggestion, the problem for me is doing that without scaring the fish away

/Marcus

---------- Post Merged on July 3rd, 2012 at 06:52 PM ---------- Previous Post was on July 2nd, 2012 at 09:08 PM ----------

I got a suggestion about the "Underwater" action for Photoshop Elements and that worked wonders on some of the photos so I've uploaded new versions of them.

/Marcus