Where in the World is JR?: Washed out in blue

Photography above water is hard. Why did I think underwater would be really easy to get great pictures? For the most part, I understand photography, shutter speeds, apertures, focal lengths, depth of field, and how ISO values affect a picture. I get how using an external strobe reduces "backscatter" underwater and how to position the strobe to prevent hotspots and prevent over or under exposure. I also understand general principles of photo composition - especially after reading so much about underwater photography. Putting all these theories into place though... wow. Forget that I'm using a simple point and shoot camera and it's impossible or incredibly difficult to adjust many of these settings to where they need to be.

One of the biggest issues you face underwater is the dilution of colors. First, a quick lesson in colors and light. The visible spectrum of natural light is made up of various shades of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo (some just consider this the border between Blue and Violet), and Violet. Red is the lowest energy and Violet is the highest energy. The color you perceive an object to be is the color of light that is reflected off the object. A red apple absorbs all colors except red. Red is reflected off the apple and gives it that nice delicious coloration. A black object does not reflect ANY color back to the eye, and a white object reflects ALL colors back to the eye. Now here's how this all relates to photography: Water absorbs light very quickly, and the deeper you go, the faster you lose the lower energy colors. Red is absorbed very quickly, and is no longer a visible color by about 15 feet. At 25 feet, Orange is gone, and by around 45 feet, you lose yellow. This is why so many underwater pictures you see are heavily tinted in a blue green. To make matters worse, those distances are an additive of both depth and distance. If the object is 25 feet deep and you're 15 feet away, the light has to travel 40 feet underwater to get to your eye. That's a lot of color loss very quickly.

In comes the external strobe. This is better than the built in flash of a camera for two reasons. One, it's more powerful. Two, since it is not directly next to the lens and since it can be angled in all sorts of ways, you can eliminate backscatter. Backscatter is those little particles that fly through the water. If you the light from the camera (strobe) isn't angled properly, they'll light up like a Christmas tree (see picture 2 below).

But beyond the composition, camera, and lighting issues, there's the biggest one of all to contend with underwater - and it has nothing to do with the actual picture itself. Buoyancy. When you're diving, you usually wear weights so that you sink. You'll put air into your buoyancy control device (BCD) so that you can stay at one depth in the water. So first you need to master that so you can try to stay still while taking the picture. The other problem is breathing. When you breathe in, you expand your lungs which then expands your body.You now weigh the same as before, but you're displacing more water and you're going to start floating to the surface. When you exhale completely, you'll start sinking again. You have to find that sweet spot in your breath where you're completely neutrally buoyant and you can actually stay still. Oh, and if there's a current underwater (which there is 99% of the time), you're screwed.

Picture 1. Fish Butt

My first ever picture underwater... the dreaded Fish Butt. This is a major composition no no. Who wants to see a picture of a fish's ass?

Picture 2. Backscatter

Here's a prime example of backscatter. On this day, there was a particularly high level of floating particles which made it all that much more difficult to avoid the backscatter. Paired up with it being my first time shooting underwater... my pictures were pretty much screwed.

Picture 3. Alien Invasion!

This dive was at Fish Eye Marine Park. There is an underwater observatory that lets people stay dry and see the reef. There is also reef "tours" that allow Japanese tourists to walk around the reef in these big helmets. I think they look like space people if you ask me.

Picture 4. If you look at it full size, it looks worse!

My macro photography clearly needs some work. The light exposure was good, but the focus sure does leave something to be desired. I have no idea why the macro mode on my camera doesn't seem to work well. It's supposed to be able to focus as close as around an inch or two.

Picture 5b. Strobe on low power

The next two pictures will show you the difference a strobe can make. This one is with the strobe at it's lowest setting. Look at how washed out and blue-green everything looks (yeah, the sea star is supposed to be blue).

Picture 5b. Strobe on high power

Now look at the difference turning up the strobe. Unfortunately, I probably turned it up one or two notches too high, or could have angled it a bit better. I've got a couple overexposed hot spots where the flash made things too bright. Notice how much more color you see in the photograph though, and how the sand doesn't look blue.

That's about enough for a photography lesson from someone who doesn't really know what he's talking about anyway. Now I'll just post up some other interesting pictures from my dives this past weekend. If you want to see all my diving pictures, just go here: https://picasaweb.google.com/114228026881935585471 - For now, I'll post ALL my pictures - Good, bad, and ugly. Out of focus and beautifully composed. That is until I burn through the free storage space Google gives me. That's likely to happen soon too, considering I've used half of it in 3.5 dives worth of pictures.

Picture 6. An attempt at being artistic

Picture 7. A sunken Amtrac (Amphibious Assault Vehicle from WWII)

Picture 8. Me with said Amtrac

Picture 9. Interesting rock formation

Picture 10. If only the focus was more crisp, this would've been an AWESOME picture

Picture 11. Those aren't puddles you see. This is actually underwater. I'm under a rock, and those are air pockets stuck to the rock from the air we were exhaling.

Picture 12. Fish hiding in and around a coral formation

Next we're going to hit probably the coolest section of pictures I took all day. I was able to swim right alongside a sea turtle and I got some pretty great pictures. Check all of them out on my picture website.