Have you ever gone underwater and wished to bring your camera along but didn’t achieve the best photos you ever wanted? How many times have you wanted to explore on how to capture photos underwater? This maybe your chance to redeem yourself. Hear are underwater photography tips you wouldn’t want to miss.
1. Don’t be afraid to explore the world underwater. Before you can start underwater photography, you first have to clear the fear of water and learn diving techniques. At least, learn some scuba diving techniques and attend courses that are appropriate. Photographing in waters needs balancing, floating and going with the marine life. Also, make sure that before you head to the sea, put your camera in a housing and master the buttons you need to press in order to capture underwater life. If you have a swimming pool, make it your training ground so that when you go to the sea, you already have mastery.
2. Establish and develop rapport with your subjects, or in this case, with the marine life. Now that you have mastered diving, floating and manipulating your camera, it is now time to establish great rapport with your subjects. If you know how the marine life acts or behaves, you will know where to position yourself and how to adapt or adjust with them. There are also factors that you need to put into mind like – getting close to the school of fishes, how to capture the right depth of field that looks beautiful on the coral reefs, how the marine life will react to danger using based on the code of conduct for underwater photography.
3. The closer the better. The hardest part an underwater photographer will experience is how to get closer to the subject – especially that your subjects now will be fishes. Also, the light is also another problem since the availability of light will gradually decrease. This is why you will need to get closer to your subjects and not by just zooming in. The ideal distance is between 1-3 ft. What’s best is that when you get closer to your subjects, the results of your images will have more vibrant and true colors, patterns and beauty of marine life. Just like any other subject, focus on the eyes as it gives you fine details and it will help you get stunning imagery.
4. Take pictures at eye level. Small images of marine life come from an angle taken from above. The best way is to take pictures at eye level and make them look prominent in the pictures like any other pet photos look like. Look at the LCD and screen and try to photograph from there.
5. Try macro shots. Macro photos can bring very interesting patterns of photos. Take cool macro shots of school of fishes, coral reefs, or try to experiment on your own.
6. Treat external flashes and other flashes as a last recourse. However, do not point the flash directly to your subjects as it may cause back-scattering. The remedy for this is to point the flash away from the lens to avoid this.
