swankenstein:
Here's a question: What sort of underwater pictures do you like to see? I don't mean what kind of pictures do you tend to take with your particular setup, but if you were looking at a dive magazine or book, what style/format/subject matter/etc. would really pop out at you?
Let me preface my comments. I'm a So Cal diver - we dive in cold water, with kelp, rocks and some fish. We don't get huge palegics, we don't get colorful reef fish, we don't see divers in multi-colored lycra "suits" and lame purple AL80's. All that tropical crapola is lost on me, and means nothing. I don't dive that, and to me its so much travel brochure nonsense.
As a new UW photographer, I've been giving this a lot of thought. I want pictures of diving that represent what I see, so I can take them to my dry family and loved ones and say "see... this is what I see down there... this is the attraction..."
Here's my list:
* Reef scenes have to be at the bottom of my list. Too played.
* Slightly above reef scenes on the stale-o-meter are Macros. Without a scale of reference, a Nudi could be godzilla like in porportion... I'll never know. I don't have a Macro Mask - I don't press my grill into the critters to get a closer look. I really, really am not a fan or Macros. Close up, OK... with some scale of reference, preferably.
* I hate pics washed in blue/green.
* Divers in pretty colors over reef, sponges, rocks and that ilk can get tossed, too. Hate them. This isn't Sandals - Its the So Cal Pacific.
* I love stuff with other stuff. When I look down, I see Cucumbers with Stars. I see urchins with Kelp. I see lobsters in rocks, and I see sand and plants and ledges, and all manner of life intermingling. I don't see nearly enough invertabrates, plants and other non-fishies in pics. Tube anemone's are gorgeous, Limpets are whimsical. There is tons of that stuff down there... I want pictures that reflect what its like down there.
* Not everything is alive. Urchins, Limpets, Snails, Abalone, fish, even plants (like fans.) Their bodies are part of the ecosystem, and can often be beautiful in decay. I was stunned when I dove Puget Sound in September, at how thick the bottom was with shells and shell fragments. Very rugged. A colorful macro shot of a 2" Nudi blown up to fill a 4x6 frame would be very disengenuous to the experience I had up there.
* I want scale - I love tiny divers descending onto huge wrecks, in such a murk that their HID is a pin light revealing the rusting giant as they drop (sort of like
VT's stuff...) There are few things more exciting than descending down a line into nothingness, and slowly seeing a huge outline appear, then some larger details, then that oh-my-gosh feeling when it all comes into view.
* I want to see the recognizable being taken over by the sea - a car, a tank, a plane, a helecopter. I love those. Stuff out of its element, and losing the battle to retain some sort of above-water identity. That stuff interests me.
* I like UW portraits - pictures of people I love doing the thing that they love. I love taking shots of my buddy on the descent, during a stop, etc. I want them to have pics of themselves underwater. That's important to me.
* Topography - Swim throughs, vents, pinnacles, shapes. The other night (I didn't bring the cam, like a dolt) I was diving in about 25', and the sand was so amazing. That beautiful undulating egg-carton sand. And right across this perfectly formed scene was a tral, like someone walking on air took a stick and dragged it across. The sand was so white, the pattern so symetrical, and the snail trail (or whatever) was so straight - it was the coolest thing. I would have taken a shot of that.
Anyway - maybe I'm twisted. I just find no interest in replecating textbook type macro photos of little stuff, or solo fish flating in space against a blue/green or black back ground. Its all too sterile and institutional for me. I'll save that for the biologists and school districts.
K
