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Create Your Own Luck
We all have that friend. The guy who seems to come back every few days with breath-taking shots of a world you may never see. My friend owns a business that specializes in taking customers out to visit pelagic animals. His portfolio is inundated with unbelievable photos of beaked whales, pilot whales, oceanic whitetips, whale sharks, etc. He has a self-shot of him hand-feeding a mahimahi to a false killer whale. Recently, he nailed a series featuring orcas feeding on a thresher shark in the crystal-clear waters off Hawaii. This guy just seems to have all the luck.
Or so people say. Similar is when someone assumes that a nice photo comes from an expensive camera. Breathtaking imagery does not solely come from chance or high-end equipment. Luck and gear are just two cogs in the overall process. My friend works very hard to get further out on the water than anybody else in Kona to show his customers something different. What about the work that went into researching the opportunity, or the time spent on the water and not finding anything of interest, or the untold myriads of missed/out of focus shots? This article is meant to answer back and delve into what really goes into creating the iconic images we all aspire to make.
RESEARCH THE OPPORTUNITY
This is the difference between a snapshot and a creation of art. Each animal or ecosystem has patterns and nuances that a successful underwater photographer needs to know inside and out. A thorough knowledge of the subject matter is an integral part of a process that usually starts with some biology.
The pelagic environment is a perfect example. Open-ocean sailors will go for days or even weeks through the open sea without sighting so much as a few birds, so finding pelagic creatures requires some foreknowledge. Targeted searches for pelagic marine life mean understanding systems like eddies, FAD’s, upwelling, vertical migration, currents, thin layers and temperature gradients. Open water photographic expeditions often concentrate efforts around floating objects or on current lines. That’s because these entities tend to gather life. Every animal has a preferred habitat, and some habitats will be more productive than others. Know enough about the target habitat and organism to be in the right place at the right time.
Any discussion on underwater photographic research needs a token section on conditions. Conditions as they apply to safety concerns are best covered in most dive classes. For underwater photography, we are primarily worried about visibility or turbidity. Near-shore divers thus watch for things like ocean swells and tides. A number of good websites keep tabs on such processes, but in general, most dive sites are cleanest with low swell and an incoming tide to flush in fresh oceanic water. Open ocean conditions are driven mainly by wind. Out at sea, ocean swells tend to roll under the boat unnoticed, but wind-driven chop is a killer on boat hulls and visibility alike. Even a small wind can carry vessels off faster than a diver can swim. And here’s the kicker: offshore conditions are overlooked by weather services and often differ dramatically from nearby onshore sites. In any environment, there is no substitute for observations made on site. If something looks awry, do not hesitate to call the dive.
Among the resources available to underwater photographers, a good guide tops the list. No website will substitute for the tome of knowledge a local expert can impart. Every seaside town has a list of people who specialize in providing some kind of in-water encounter. Bahamas have targeted shark tours, Grand Caymen has Stingray City, and even Rhode Island offers an underwater tour with blue sharks. These experts aren’t just lucky, they have the knowledge to find animals and the experience to keep the shutterbug safe. And don’t think for a second that seeking the help of an experienced guide is amateur; even the experts consult other experts.
GET OUT THERE
This is the most obvious advice in this article and is also the one most often ignored. Make no mistake; time on the water is work. Divemasters, instructors, and commercial divers love their occupations, but they get paid for a reason. What a solid photo won’t convey are the countless days spent shivering on a boat in search of that something special. There is no substitute for time on the water.
Not every day will be a whale shark day. Every photographer is rich with stories about the one that got away. Mine is scalloped hammerheads in Hawaii. I had committed a ream of primary literature on the subject to memory. I had seen babies from the surface in protected embayments. The adults were nowhere to be found. On a local tip, I got invited to South Kona with a guy who swore he could put me in the water with hammerheads. I was poking my head in a hole on dive number 3 for the day when a distinct clanging rang through the water. On turning around, my buddy was waving feverishly but I had already missed it. Two hammerheads swam directly over my head when I wasn’t looking. The point is that whether it is a forgotten lens cap, a slow day in the ocean or a missed opportunity, there are all sorts of reasons why a day on the water might not go as planned. The difference between a casual underwater shooter and a great one is the great ones have a bad day and get back out there again anyway.
NAIL THE SHOT
The work done so far has been in anticipation for this moment. The research has been done, the time has been spent, and now the shark has turned to make a run at your dome port, the whale is “waving” at your buddy or the manta is reflecting just right on the underside of the surface. It should be as simple as point the camera and pull the trigger. But it isn’t.
The decisions made in the seconds prior to opening the shutter are where experience and talent shine through. It is the choice of f-stop, the color of the water, and the composition that are left to the artistic eye. This is where the shot is won or lost and unfortunately, most people fail a lot before they finally start taking winning images. I recall a strange fish I saw on my first blackwater dive. I took some really grainy shots of it as I was still dialing in my camera for the dive conditions. It turned out to be a cookie cutter shark, making me one of only about a dozen people who had ever seen one alive in its natural habitat, and the only photos I took were poorly made. The key is to visualize the image ahead of time. Set the camera to mimic the pre-visualized ideal and wait for the subject to be in just the right orientation before pulling the shutter.
In the end, it is your hard work that will earn the top shot. Gear selection and luck play a small role in the overall process of creating an underwater photo. More important than luck is the work that went into finding the opportunity. Now get out there.
- The Case for Shark Feeding – March 27, 2014
- Create Your Own Luck – January 26, 2014
- Starting out in Underwater Photography – December 25, 2013