Is underwater photography difficult? Actually, no—at least, not to any significant degree when compared with any other discipline of photography. Each single stage of creating an underwater photograph, if seen in isolation from the rest, is not so tricky. It is the sum of all its parts, as well as mastering the whole, which can appear confusing at times.
There are many factors to consider when planning your dive trip, including the marine life, travel logistics, seasonal weather, ocean conditions and distance between dive sites. This is a lot to think about, and likely the reason so many of us, especially photographers, forget to consider one of the ocean’s most important processes when planning a trip—the tides.
It's large, fan-like fins wave and flare like the skirts of a Flamenco dancer, revealing vibrant shades of rust and orange with flashes of royal blue as it hunts its prey under the cover of night. As beautiful as its dance may be, one prick from one of its long dorsal spines will inflict a very painful burning sensation.
Taking pictures while freediving can be a real physical challenge, but in some cases, it may be the only option to get the subject in front of your lens.
Freediving in order to take underwater photographs is not the norm, but there are many freedivers who do just that—for example, the freediving icon Fred Buyle.
“What do you have to do?” It is the first question asked by most people when it comes to underwater modeling. As an underwater model, my answer is always the same: “I have to blend myself with the underwater environment to further enhance its beauty.”
Ask any photographer the one thing they would like to improve in their underwater images and most will likely say, “The lighting.” Lighting in photography is everything and shooting underwater often requires the photographer to read the ambient light and to create durable images on the fly.
In this article, the final one in the series, I will explain my personal experience with wide-angle underwater photography using the Olympus OM-D EM-5 camera.
So… you have your new photo equipment. Cool... now what? Should we just jump in the water with it?
The apparently contradictory choice of adding teleconverters to fish-eye lenses to obtain arresting “wide-macro” images has long been adopted by many rainforest and insect specialists—notably Frans Lanting, the grand master of them all—while several Japanese authors have pioneered its use in underwater photography since the last decade.
Muck diving is a term used quite frequently these days that can be applied to either a dive site, a type of diving or even an entire region like Lembeh Strait in Indonesia or Anilao in the Philippines.
These areas of the Indo-Pacific have consistently ranked amongst the highest in terms of high coral counts, reef fish and of course the high impact Holy Grail of critters.
— Close-up Underwater Photography with Mirrorless Cameras
