While I am mostly a wildlife/nature photographer, one of the most interesting books on photography that I have read in a very long time is "Magnum Contacts Sheets" - link below (and no, I don't get a commission if you buy it 🙂)
https://www.amazon.com/Magnum-Contact-Sheets-Kristen-Lubben/dp/0500292914
This book shows the contact sheets of the photos taken by various Magnum photographers in trying to get their shot. It provides an absolutely fascinating insight into the mindset and creative process followed by some of the best photographers in the world. One of the biggest take-aways for me was the degree to which these photographers "work" the subject, in terms of exhausting various angles, perspectives and compositions.
It took a lot of waiting to get the fusiliers aligned just right
While this may not be news to some of the old hands here at Wet/Waterpixels, this is something I have rarely seen divers do in the real world, especially those new to underwater photography. Regardless of whether they are carrying a Go Pro, a TGx or a housed system, most photographers I see will swim up to a subject, spend a few seconds composing the image and adjusting their lights, take the shot and then swim off to the next subject. While this may be good for getting clean documentary shots of the subject, the results are generally lacking a little in artistic value.
Yes, I did say "artistic value". As the art of underwater photography evolves, well-exposed, sharp photographs of various marine life (documentation) have become pretty much common-place. So how does a photographer evolve his/her images to make them stand out?
The next step up from simple documentation is showing behaviour/action - and while this requires the photographer to be alert and technically proficient, there isn't necessarily a lot of creative input here either: the subject does the heavy lifting in terms of making the image.
There wasn't much creative input into this image other than the choice of angles - replace the tiger shark with a less interesting fish and this photo would not be very interesting
The highest level of photography (IMO) involves creating images where it is the design and composition that makes the image stand out - not merely "look, here is a cool subject". In wildlife, for example, it is much harder to take a great image of an antelope than a lion - similarly, it is much harder to take a "wow" shot of a coral head or some reef fish underwater than a whale shark or manta. You have to spend time thinking about what to include and exclude in the image, how to compose the frame, how to light it, etc. etc.
When it comes to artistic design, your first shot is unlikely to be your best shot - atleast not consistently or unless your name starts with "Henri" and ends with "Cartier-Bresson". It takes time to work through the various compositional aspects in order to find the best image - ie, you need to work the subject. If you do, you can be rewarded with images that go well beyond the obvious.
I'd like to illustrate what I mean with an example of how I went about taking one of the shots I really like. To set expectations, I have the natural creative talent of a brick and have to take a very methodical approach to taking images. So this process may seem a little plodding to the creative geniuses out there. For the rest of us, perhaps it may be helpful.
This was a coral head I came across on a dive during a trip to Raja Ampat:
I found the glass fish sheltering under the coral to be quite interesting and got into position, angled my strobes, set the exposure and fired off a shot, resulting in this:
Ok, it's a shot showing the coral and the fish. But there really isn't much else to redeem it. It's lacking colour and pop, and there really is no unifying theme to the image other than "here's a bunch of stuff". And most that stuff is adding nothing to the image (and would not, regardless of how great the corner sharpness was 😜).
So I decided to get a little closer and see what I got. It took around 10-15 shots from various angles before I found something that looked promising:
Ok, now the image has a little more pop and there are no extraneous elements. But it still seems a little haphazard. Hmm, maybe having the glass fish appear more synchronised would help?
This led to a few more shots (well, 60+, actually) trying to get the pesky fish to be aligned the way I wanted. Some of them:
There were quite a few other variants of the above, with the fish facing one way or another. All were pretty nice but from a design element, there was something lacking - these images were still not giving me a sense or scale of being on an amazing reef in Raja Ampat. While nicer than the earlier images, these were still simple "look, here's some fish" images.
So I decided to go a little wider to see if that would help capture the essence of the underwater world a little better.
Ok, now this felt better. The blue water on the other side of the coral balanced the glassfish a little more, and gave a greater sense of the reef, and I was quite pleased with the image. But then I started thinking about how all the visual elements were only on one side of the coral whereas the blue water was completely lacking in any point of interest. Some more shooting and gesturing to my dive guide resulted in this:
Bonus points to the coral grouper for a serendipitous appearance
This (to my eyes, at least) felt like the best photo of the bunch - a good 100+ exposures after the initial image. I could have stopped after the first few images, I could have stopped after 20-30 images but by spending 30+ minutes in this one location, I found a photo that truly appealed to me.
Is it perfect? Of course not. There is perspective distortion with the diver that could have been mitigated by having the diver move away from the edges. I'd have also have liked him to be holding a torch. That's a testimony to the fact that despite the time I spent, I could have always worked the subject more.
So what's the takeaway here? Pretty simple: too many divers spend their entire dive swimming around, taking a couple of photos here and a couple of photos there. That's perfectly fine when you are starting out and is a good way to hone your technical skills and build a good foundation of documentary images and also action photos.
But as your skills evolve, a good way to improve the quality of your images is by becoming more selective. Try to get a few really great shots as opposed to a large number of average ones. And in order to achieve this, shoot fewer subjects - but the subjects that you do shoot, shoot them really well. By that, I don't mean just blindly fire away and hope for the best. Instead, take a deliberate approach to positioning yourself, your perspective and exposure/lighting. Think about different ways you can compose the image. Then review the results, decide what could improve and repeat.
Starting thinking like a photographer who happens to be on scuba - as opposed to a scuba diver who has a camera.
Sure, this isn't always easy to do: unless you have your own private guide or are diving with a group of photographers, you rarely have the ability to spend as much time as you prefer on a subject. But if your goal is take the best possible images, you will have to find a workaround to that. Most dive centres are generally very receptive to (and slightly dread!) underwater photographers, and are willing to work with them in terms of guides, groups, etc. Make that extra effort and you will find the quality of your images improves significantly.
Footnote: the series of images above is not a statement about how awesome the final image is. I like it a lot (and I shoot to please myself), but I have photographer friends who aren't that impressed by it (which is perfectly fine). The goal is to illustrate the approach to working a scene, and hopefully, this sequence illustrates it well.
Sometimes, no matter how much you try, the animals don't cooperate. I spent a lot of time working through various compositions till I found one that appealed to me - all it needed was an appropriate subject swimming through at the right location. Despite waiting for almost 30 minutes, I didnt have any luck better than this.
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