Natural Light Under The Sea.

Photography on land has a certain set of challenges that you have to overcome to get good images, then you go underwater and you are faced with an all new set of challenges. The main difference between photography on land and underwater is the water, now this may sound really obvious but it affects composition, colour, light and more. Probably the most dramatic of these is light, it is quickly scattered and so you notice objects becoming dark and flat even at relatively shallow depth. While you can get images with natural light you can only do this in shallow water, below about 10-15 metres you need artificial light, usually in the form of a strobe or a torch. For the first couple of months I had my underwater housing I didn't have a strobe so I had a lot of practice trying to get images with natural light. I think it would be fair to describe my results as, mixed. I had been preparing to get started in underwater photography by reading books and watching videos and talks on the subject and so I thought I pretty much knew where to start, as you can see below, I didn't. All the books and videos in the world can only get you so far, the best way to learn is to get a camera in your hand get snapping.

This is a perfect example of all the difficulties introduced by the water. The most glaring issue is the lack of contrast because of the distance to the subject, you will very quickly find that the most important rule to getting good photos underwater is get closer, It increases light, colour and contrast. You will also find that scenes will look a lot softer through the camera than they appear to your eye so when you think you're close enough, get closer. Also this image is really flat as any light from the subject is scattered through all the water between them and the lens. Finally the whole image is entirely blue because light naturally becomes more blue as it is diffracted through water and this image was taken a bit deep and you can see that the rocks closer to the camera have more colour.

This image was taken down at about 20 metres and I was too far from the subject again so it is pretty much unusable. These too factors are why this image is so blue and soft. When I initially took this picture I thought it was great, the way the fish shoaled around the diver on the spit of rock but when I got it back on the computer I saw it was blurred, flat, dark and colourless.

Sometimes these things don't detract from the end result, here for example I was down at 25 metres, in a cave and the subject was a long way away but the image still works. I used the softening effect of the water to show the way the light falls around the rocks and to give the picture a slightly mysterious feel. I also used a portrait orientation to show the gradient of light as it got shallower.

This image shows what it looks like when you get close and shallow. The port was about 50cm from the subjects and I was 4 metres down so I retained all of the colour that these fish have. Also the reduced distance to the shoal of fish means that they are far sharper than the previous pictures. Without a doubt you will eventually need an artificial light to get good underwater photographs but in the mean time get shallow and get close for the best results. If you are struggling with white balance and loss of colour you can always make the images black and white, this is a tricky effect to pull off but it is possible, so if you get your images back on your computer and you're not happy with them, try black and white.

Here, the stark contrast between the clear water above and the dark walls of the cave, combined with the light beams, make for an interesting black and white composition. The lack of a forground subject means the strobe wouldn't light anything so the colours would be washed out anyway. This image would be stronger if the diver was clearer and I had left room to crop in a little to remove the distortion at the edges of the frame.