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Duxy’s Underwater Photography Blog: Available Light, Part 3

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Well we are now hopefully aware that to take good available light shots, we need to get close to our subjects, and if they are larger than a typical fish ID pic then we probably need to think about using a wider than normal lens, as explained in the first part of our series here.

And then we need to address the issue of getting blue pictures when what we would like is bright colourful pictures showing the whole range of the spectrum, and this we looked at in part two.

What happens when things don’t work out?

And more importantly, how do we learn to figure what makes a good situation for using available light, or when we still want to shoot with available light but our colours aren’t as good as we would like, despite our best efforts at white balancing?

In an ideal world, all of our available light shots would be taken around half ten in the morning, with the sun behind us, camera pointing very slightly downwards, in about 8 metres of water.

This is an unrealistic expectation though. And of course we can’t possibly guarantee this. It’s helpful to know that Custom White Balance doesn’t always produce the goods.

Folk often get flushed with the success of their early attempts at Custom White Balance, but after the honeymoon period has worn off, they can often become jaded with their results as time passes.

This is for a number of reasons I have found.

First and foremost they have unrealistic expectations of what custom white balance is capable of doing. And this coincides with them becoming more critical underwater photographers as they gain more experience.

To solve the first problem they need to draw on their new found skills and adapt how they shoot available light.

A very common problem is shooting towards the light rather than away from it, and this tends to cause over exposure with an automatic camera, as it tries to expose for the subject occupying the majority of the frame. This then results in the background – either the sand or the surface – taking on a horrible magenta or pink hue.

This is because the colour correction that the custom white balance is introducing is only accurate for the correctly exposed foreground. The background goes like this, as both a combination of overexposure, and also that the surface is shallower requiring less aggressive colour correction. There’s nothing wrong with your camera; it’s just physics working against you.

When it all goes horribly wrong!

If you overly rely on Custom White Balance to sort out your colour problems, you will inevitably end up with shots like this one above. Poor exposure balance and the overexposed background with the sun shining towards you will be marred with a horrible colour cast. This is not a fault of your camera. The camera is only trying to do what you are asking, but it’s the circumstances that are less than ideal.

So, how do you manage this? Well first try where possible to compose and shoot with the sun behind you. And try and shoot slightly downwards using this technique too.

There’s nothing wrong with shooting into the sun – in fact it’s great for silhouettes and dramatic sunbeam pictures that are strobe lit, just not for available light. You just have to teach yourself when it is and isn’t going to work.

Silhouettes

If you are shooting into the sun, then silhouettes are a good example where you have to be very careful when custom white balancing. This shot of a lionfish was taken on a point and shoot Canon camera nearly 8 years ago. I locked my exposure using a half press of the shutter release, whilst pointing at the brightest area, and based my white balance reading not on my hand or the subject, but on the surface water itself. Helping prevent those awful white balance issues shown above.

Another problem with Custom White Balance is that we forget to change it when we change depth, and this becomes more apparent in the shallows, nearer the surface; and our shot is spoiled by the amount of correction applied say at 10m being much too much when we ascend to 5m. So you must remember to get familiar with the procedure and take new readings as you change depth.

Depth Perception

Depth Perception is a common fault when using Custom White Balance, as is forgetting to regularly change your White Balance settings as you change depth. If I didn’t have to already tell you, the shot on the top (above) is the result of taking a picture without white balancing after shooting previously at a greater depth. The shot at the bottom is the same view, but correctly white balanced.

To solve the second most common issue with available light shooting, we also need to draw on our prior experiences.

As we become more capable photographers, starting to get lovely colourful pictures in bright conditions, we need to understand that the camera will lull us into a false sense of security, and the success we see at the shallower depths, i.e. from the surface to around 12m, isn’t as well replicated as we get deeper.

This is because although custom white balance, at least with some camera brands (particularly the Canons) seems to do a remarkable job at ridding us of the blues, it really can’t work magic; and as we get deeper, the colour and amount of light diminishes.

So along with the colours not being as great, what can happen when we go deeper, especially if we are using a fully automatic camera, is that we start to see blur – and camera shake appears.

Who turned out the lights?

Why? Well our eyes and brains are very good at adapting to the steadily diminishing light, and even though it may only look a little darker to us when we go from 10 to 20m, the camera is starting to struggle as the light is much less than we are experiencing.

The trick is to keep an eye on what the camera is telling you; even the most automatic cameras will show you what shutter speed that they are picking, and more importantly, if you are straying into the danger zone, i.e. the shutter speed is too slow to easily hand hold the camera, or that there may be a risk of camera shake or subject movement.
Usually this is a red warning light or a symbol of a shaky hand, or the data or the shutter speed will be highlighted in a warning red colour.

Check in close detail

When we look at the small image on the back of our camera’s screen, at first glance (top pic) everything may seem OK at this small size. However it’s worth zooming into your shot to see if it’s spoilt by camera shake as it clearly is above (bottom pic).  Sometimes things may seem bright to us, but they really aren’t as you can see if you zoom into the same shot and see the telltale blurring of camera shake. So don’t assume everything is fine until you look closer.

This can be helped by increasing the ISO settings on our cameras which will force the camera to pick faster shutter speeds and also help reduce the blur in our subjects.

There is a side effect to increasing the ISO though and that’s more grainy or noisy pictures, which looks like this:

Shooting in lower light

Same scene as before, but this time to rid myself of the camera shake I’ve chosen a very high ISO to force the camera into picking a faster shutter speed, thus eliminating the camera shake. Unfortunately though we’ve introduced another problem. And that’s digital noise, which is exacerbated by high ISO’s and low light, and renders the picture virtually unusable as you can see from the enlarged section in the bottom half above.

OK, to be fair I’ve used extremes at either end of the range here to highlight the issues, but once you learn exactly how much, and no more, to raise the ISO’s to give you workable shutter speeds in lots of different scenarios, you are halfway to being able to really get to grips and control your camera in a wide variety of circumstances when available light is your choice (or sometimes only option).

To summarise, try and take your available light Custom white Balanced shots in good light and preferably with the sun behind you. And also be aware that although the camera will let you shoot at lower light levels, the results when you get them back on your computer may be spoilt by camera shake and subject movement, so increase the ISO or take your shot shallower if possible.

So in part 4, I will be looking at other ways to colour correct your pictures, and options you may have but not realise, along with examples of what to do when you can’t colour correct things properly.

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Scuba Travel new logoDuxy is the in house photo-pro for UK-based dive tour operator Scuba Travel. To find out about availability on Scuba Travel’s underwater photography workshops hosted by Duxy click here.

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Diver Discovering Whale Skeletons Beneath Ice Judged World’s Best Underwater Photograph

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UPY

An emotive photograph showing a freediver examining the aftermath of whaling sees
Alex Dawson from Sweden named Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024. Dawson’s
photograph ‘Whale Bones’ triumphed over 6500 underwater pictures entered by underwater
photographers from around the world.

“Whale Bones was photographed in the toughest conditions,” explains chair of judging
panel Alex Mustard, “as a breath-hold diver descends below the Greenland ice sheet to bear
witness to the carcasses. The composition invites us to consider our impact on the great
creatures of this planet. Since the rise of humans, wild animals have declined by 85%. Today,
just 4% of mammals are wildlife, the remaining 96% are humans and our livestock. Our way
needs to change to find a balance with nature.”

UPY

Photo: Rafael
Fernandez Caballero

Whales dominated the winning pictures this year with Spanish photographer Rafael
Fernandez Caballero winning two categories with his revealing photos of these ocean giants:
a close up of a grey whale’s eye and an action shot of a Bryde’s whale engulfing an entire bait
ball, both taken in Magdalena Bay, Baja California, Mexico. Fernandez Caballero took ‘Grey
Whale Connection’ while drifting in a small boat, holding his camera over the side in the water
to photograph the curious whale. ‘The End Of A Baitball’ required Fernandez Caballero to dive
down and be in exactly the right place at the moment the whale lunged. “The photo shows
the high speed attack,” he said, “with the whale engulfing hundreds of kilograms of sardines
in one bite — simply unforgettable to see predation on such a scale.”

UPY

Photo: Rafael
Fernandez Caballero

Lisa Stengel from the United States was named Up & Coming Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 for her image of a mahi-mahi catching a sardine, in Mexico. Stengel used both a very fast shutter speed and her hearing to catch the moment. “If you listen there’s an enormous amount of sound in the ocean,” she explained. “The action was too fast to see, so I honed in on the sound of the attacks with my camera to capture this special moment.”

“It is such an exciting time in underwater photography because photographers are capturing such amazing new images, by visiting new locations and using the latest cameras,”
commented judge Alex Mustard. “Until this year I’d hardly ever see a photo of a mahi mahi,
now Lisa has photographed one hunting, action that plays out in the blink of an eye.”
The Underwater Photographer of the Year contest is based in the UK, and Jenny Stock,
was named as British Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 for her image “Star
Attraction”, which finds beauty in species of British wildlife that are often overlooked.
Exploring the west coast of Scotland, Stock explained “in the dark green depths my torch
picked out the vivid colours of a living carpet of thousands of brittle stars, each with a
different pattern. I was happily snapping away, when I spotted this purple sea urchin and I
got really excited.”

Photo: Jenny Stock

In the same contest, Portuguese photographer, Nuno Sá, was named ‘Save Our Seas
Foundation’ Marine Conservation Photographer of the Year 2024, with his photo ‘Saving
Goliath’, taken in Portugal. Sá’s photo shows beachgoers trying to save a stranded sperm
whale. The picture gives us hope that people do care and want to help the oceans, but also
warns us that bigger changes are needed. “The whale had been struck by a ship and its fate
was sealed,” explains Sá. “An estimated 20,000 whales are killed every year, and many more
injured, after being struck by ships-and few people even realise that it happens.”

UPY

Photo: Nuno Sá

More winning images can be found at www.underwaterphotographeroftheyear.com.

About Underwater Photographer of the Year

Underwater Photographer of the Year is an annual competition, based in the UK, that celebrates photography beneath the surface of the ocean, lakes, rivers and even swimming pools, and attracts entries from all around the world. The contest has 13 categories, testing photographers with themes such as Macro, Wide Angle, Behaviour and Wreck photography, as well as four categories for photos taken specifically in British waters. The winners were announced in an award ceremony in Mayfair, London, hosted by The Crown Estate. This year’s UPY judges were experienced underwater photographers Peter Rowlands, Tobias Friedrich and Dr Alexander Mustard MBE.

Header image: Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 winner Alex Dawson

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World’s Best Underwater Photographers Unveil Breathtaking Images at World Shootout 2023

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The winners of the prestigious World Shootout 2023 underwater photography competition were announced at this year’s BOOT Show, captivating audiences at the world’s largest diving and water sports exhibition in Dusseldorf, Germany. Hundreds of photographers from 54 countries competed across nine categories, pushing the boundaries of creativity and technical skill.

Grand Prize Winners

  • Picture of the Year: Spanish photographer Eduardo Acevedo “secured” the top Honor with the prestigious prize the “boot Dusseldorf Director’s Prize, earning an Andromeda statuette and a €2,000 cash prize.
  • Best 5 Images Portfolio: Luc Rooman from Belgium triumphed in this category, winning a dream 4-week diving trip for two to Papua New Guinea, valued at $18,900.
  • Amateur Photographer: Alexandra Ceurvorst from the USA impressed the judges with her talent, taking home the 1,000 cash prize award.

Celebrating Diversity and Innovation

This year’s competition saw 11,680 entries from 964 photographers, showcasing a remarkable spectrum of skills and perspectives. From the intricate wonders of Macro photography to the beauty of “Black Water”, the “Underwater Fashion” category added a touch of artistry and innovation, while the ever-important ” Environmental & Conservation” category served as a powerful reminder of the need to protect these fragile ecosystems.

Looking Ahead: AI and Ocean Conservation

World Shootout founder and producer David Pilosof unveiled an exciting addition for the 2024 competition: this year the Environmental category will be focusing on the impact of plastic on our oceans and future.

This category will embrace the potential of AI or other editing software as a tool to amplify the conservation message.

Entrants will submit campaigns of three original underwater photographs dealing with plastic pollution, along with their final AI assistance processing. This innovative approach encourages artistic expression while raising awareness about a critical environmental issue.

Explore the Stunning Collection

Discover the complete album of competition entries by clicking here.

For Low-resolution photos of finalist entries in eight categories, click here.

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