DIVE LOG DECEMBER 25 ISSUE 415

The secretive Blue Devil is Sydney’s entrant into the world’s most beautiful fish.

Above: I like to get colourful backgrounds to highlight the subject

Lighting

the fish entering the scene. That is, it is swimming into the negative space rather than leaving the scene. When your eye looks at a photo, you tend to be drawn to the main feature of the photo. If there are two or three competing visual stimuli that distract your eye, then it is probably not a good photo. You might try to get a simple background such as blue sky or a red sponge to make the fish stand out. Therefore, you are trying to isolate the subject rather than having it lost within a background. You want your subject to stand out without competition from a lump of rock, unless it somehow enhances the photo. Your brain tends to read from left to right as we are used to reading that way.

At the beginning of the dive, turn the camera around, hold it at arm’s length and move the flashes so that they point at your face. Take a test shot of blue water. Adjust the settings on your camera to capture that serene blue of nature. It is the most visually pleasing. Similarly, if you have a focus light, make sure that it is aimed at the area where your intended subjects are going to be. Naturally, you make the relevant adjustments for macro and for wide angle photography. Once you have taken the first shot, double check the exposure to confirm that the strobes are lighting up your subject. Some U/W photographers like to include some shadow into their photos to give it that three-dimension

Another extremely difficult photo to capture is the Tesselated Leatherjacket.

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Dive Log Australasia #415 DECEMBER ’25

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