Knowing How to Manage Light is the Secret of Successful Underwater Photos

Since 2002, when digital cameras became widely available, a camera has become an essential accessory for most recreational divers. It is almost part of their diving equipment. As professional underwater photographers, I have decided to share a few secrets and tips for taking beautiful underwater photos.

A goby on a hard coral colony in the Red Sea, Egypt.

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The Basics: Diving Techniques

Knowing the essentials of safe diving is not enough for successful underwater photography. When an underwater photographer needs to make fine adjustments to his buoyancy, he should not have to rely on his buoyancy compensator. He should have mastered the ballast lung technique, which allows for very fine adjustments.

Mastering buoyancy techniques helps a photographer avoid damaging the seabed and disturbing the animals he is trying to photograph. When using artificial light, the photographer will only be a few inches away from his subject, and the last thing he wants to do is crash into it or frighten it away.

A perfect mastery of buoyancy also enables a photographer to take very sharp pictures. Motion, even if it is only shaking hands or a mistimed breath, often causes blurry photos.

On an ideal diving trip, the first two dives should be in less than 50 feet of water. At that depth, there is more time to readjust the settings and learn good breathing habits.

Know Your Equipment

In order to take good underwater photos, a photographer should know the basic functions of his camera by heart. Even 60 feet underwater, his ability to make judgements and decisions will be altered. No one is quite as alert underwater as they would be on land. Whatever adjustments he needs to make to the camera should be instinctive, whether it is setting the speed, aperture, or sensitivity. He should be able to make any adjustment to the camera without having to look at the buttons or the menu.

For example, when photographing a fish, a photographer must be able to react immediately or the fish will be gone before the picture is taken. I often recommend that beginning photographers take a few hundred pictures on land before they try going underwater. Knowledge of every single function on the camera, of course, is not essential, but knowing all the basics is very useful.

The Great Secret: Lighting

The key to creating a beautiful photograph is mastery of light, whether natural or artificial.

Natural light is used to photograph large animals, such as dolphins or whales. As they are often relatively far away from the lens, a flash is useless because the light does not reach the subjects. Large animals often swim close enough to the surface for natural light to be used. Natural light is also used in caves where there are skylights, such as the caves in the Red Sea or the Cenotes in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Underwater strobes are the best form of artificial lighting, since they give the best rendering of the subjects. Artificial light can freeze the movement of highly mobile fish and show the natural colors of the seabed. For artificial light to be effective, a photographer needs to be very close to his subject. The closer he is to his subject, the more light from the strobe will actually reach the subject.

Whether natural or artificial, light must be used correctly. If a photographer does not understand how to use light, he will never be able to take beautiful underwater photographs. Mastery of light is an essential skill, even though it is not easy to learn.

Most underwater strobes use TTL, which means that the camera body controls the speed of the strobe. However, TTL takes some of the control over the light away from the photographer. It can keep a good shot from being really beautiful. When the camera is the one in control, the result is not a great creative work.

Mastering natural light is a challenge because underwater photographers have to know how to use the sun and how to adapt the camera’s settings to make the best use of the light. It is also essential to wait until the subject is in exactly the right place. This is the only way to create pictures that look “modeled”. The same thing has to be done for pictures which use a mixture of natural and artificial light. Learning these techniques requires time and practice. Once a photographer has mastered light, he often does not recognize his own photos.

A jellyfish in the Mediterranean sea off the coast of Monaco.

Go Closer, a Little Closer, Even Closer

The “10-10-10-30-40 rule” in Photography

How do you make a great and memorable photo? How do the great photographers do it? I hear these questions at some point during every photo workshop. To answer them, I eventually came up with “the rule of 10-10-10-30-40”.

Hummingbird in flight foraging a flower.

The sailfish sardine run off the coast of Mexico, Isla Mujeres.

The Equipment Is Not as Important as Some People Think
Developing Your Own Photographic Artistry
Post-processing Is Essential
Luck, Chance, Destiny: The Holy Grail of Photography
My 10-10-10-30-40 Rule in Photography

The Equipment Is Not as Important as Some People Think

With the advent of digital technology, camera manufacturers immediately understood that people were always interested in the newest model. But the problem with this is that people who constantly race for the newest, “best” model are never satisfied.

When the marketing is effective, you may end up believing that you must have the new gadget to take good pictures.

People buy the thing believing that it will solve all their problems. The equipment is important, but it cannot make you into a photographer.

I have met many people who thought that they could take the photo of the century just because they had new equipment. Big mistake!

Once you have a good camera, there is no need to get another one for quite a long time.

Photographers who know how to use their camera properly have no problem can take good pictures with any reasonably good-quality camera. In 2004, the American photographer Doug Perrine won the scuba class of the prestigious BBC World Life contest with a simple Canon EOS 60D that he had owned for several years.

Developing Your Own Photographic Artistry

When they spend too much time looking at others’ work, many photographers forget their personal style and try to copy what they have seen.

Although I often recommend this approach as a starting point for finding inspiration, it is not where you should stop. You should develop a style which reflects your own interests and motivations. In short, everyone needs a personal photographic artistry.

Once you know the basic techniques of composition, managing depth of field, setting the exposure, and managing light, you can begin to develop your own style.

You can begin to show other people aspects of the world that they have not seen. That style is the one that will allow your to be recognized by others. Choose themes that you like, and do not try to make your photos perfect. For example, you can focus on close up photography in general, or taking pictures of species living in cold countries.

Most photographers move in the same universe, and they often face the same issues in choosing their specialty. Sometimes, what you think you want may not be what you actually like to do: why try to specialize in Asian photography when you take 90% of your photos in Brittany?

Post-processing Is Essential

I believe that it is now essential to know how to use specialized software to develop photos. This software can adjust the exposure, white balance, contrast, and lighting, remove particles, crop the photo if necessary, saturate the colors a little, and adjust the sharpness...

All these techniques are designed to correct imperfections caused by digital cameras that are not calibrated to take a particular type of photographs.

Each subject has its own unique mood, and sometimes what the camera sees is a little different from what you see. Post-processing simply allows you to make sure that the photograph portrays what you actually saw during the shoot.

My intention is not to defend or use the technique of photo composition as many people do. I am not interested in creating imaginary scenes cobbled together from multiple photographs. For me, this is not “photography” in the strict sense but “photographic art”.

Compositing is an art form that was born with the advent of image processing software. Computer post-processing, however, uses the same techniques used in the laboratory before the digital age. New technologies have made it simple and accessible to everyone.

Hummingbird in flight foraging a flower.

Luck, Chance, Destiny: The Holy Grail of Photography

This is the only factor that cannot be quantified or programmed, and therefore it is essential for the creation of a great picture.

Luck, destiny, chance, call it what you will, but no one, not even the best photographers in the world, can do without it.

It is the unexpected moment when an extraordinary scene will appear in front of the lens and you will capture it. It is this memorable moment that you have often waited for years to see. These are the moments that I call “magical". On many of my trips, I do not take any really good pictures, simply because the evasive luck was not there. Other times, my patience has been rewarded and I have taken wonderful, beautiful photos.

All great photos happened in part because the photographer had "luck", but I always remind my students of the truism so well known by gamers: "100% of winners have tried."

Keep this maxim in mind, and sooner or later you will find luck. Imagine you have a simple point and shoot camera and you happen to find a pair of rare sharks mating while one of your friends is photographing nudibranchs in Lembeh Strait, with the last generation SLR camera. Which one will take the great photo? Without this factor of chance, it is impossible to take a picture worthy of winning a contest or becoming well-known.