John Liddiard

I suffer really badly from this dilemma. Form my web site its easy, its a catalogue of everything that doesn't get thrown away, not a sweet and simple portfolio advert. For a particular project, as @TimG says, knowing your audience becomes important. For a show with words, or an article, its often the words that dictate the pictures. If a picture doesn't support a point in the story, it gets culled. For pictures shown just as pictures, they need to have wow or interest for the expected audience. These factors are often more important than picture quality. Any picture that needs to be explained or justified beyond the words of the story (or no words) gets culled. Even then I always end up with too many and struggle over the final cull. The pictures then go through the friends filter. Do they like it? no, then cull it. Then its off to the editor because I just cant cull any further. Some editors are really good and select from the submitted pics to work with the story, but only if there are not too many to select from. I have occasionally worked with less refined editors who select the first N from the folder no matter how they work with the story. Hence a pressure on me to cull even further before submitting. But this is a happy problem to have. Better to get home with too many pictures for a story than not enough!

Before wet lenses, when I used to set a primary lens for the dive, my default plan was to dive WA early/late in the day and macro in the middle of the day. Reason being, by avoiding WA in the middle of the day I didn't need as much strobe power to dominate over natural light. Its not just daylight that gets blue filtered, all light including strobe light gets blue filtered. No matter how much strobe power there is, no matter how high the ISO, subjects further away tend to blue. Hence by getting close and avoiding too much natural light, you don't need massive strobe power for WA. For me, more powerful strobes = faster/longer burst at reduced power. One final thought, rather than bigger strobes, consider more strobes. You don't see it so often now, but it used to be some photographers would have 4 strobes mounted to cover the corners or to dismount for an off-camera fill. Even if you don't use them all at the same time, an advantage of more cheaper strobes is redundancy on a trip. Again not so important now strobes are more reliable.

If monster IQ was really the be-all and end-all of taking pictures, we would all be taking Hasselblads diving. As it is, a MFT now is as good as full frame sensors of a couple of generations ago.

A side effect of bigger pixel count is the amount storage processing and memory needed to view and edit the files. This increases at least linearly, and depending on the processing could be substantially above linear. Its not just the cost of cameras, lenses and housing. Bigger memory cards, bigger disk, more RAM, bigger processor ... It all adds up.

From Hurghada shore based, I have always enjoyed Gota Abu Ramada for fish portraits. Its usually a check dive, beginner and last dive of the day. It can be very busy, with the advantage that the fish are very used to divers and don't need much effort to stalk. Awkward for wide angle, too many stray divers in the background. Unlikely to be on the agenda for a liveaboard.

The Coptic museum has a terrifying collection of circumcision knives through the ages.

As well as boats, you can shore dive the casino point on Catalina. Get a ferry from LA, then you rent a trolley, cylinders and weights from the dive centre. Then take your trolley up to the casino and take yourself diving. There is also a kayak rental outfit where you can rent a dive kayak. This was all >20 years ago, so could be out of date by now. I found one of my articles on the web archive. https://web.archive.org/web/20110710134649/http://www.divernetxtra.com/travel/kayak0600.htm There is another article some where about the shore diving.

I use a Shearwater Predator computer strapped round a strobe arm. Its rarely perfectly the right way up, but is easy enough to read and anything not green gets my attention to rotate the whole rig if necessary. I find I pay more attention than I would to a computer on a wrist. By having nothing on my wrists for warm water diving, kitting up is quick. No messing about with wrist straps. No risk of forgetting anything. Just pick up the camera and jump in knowing everything is there. For cold water the same, except this is my backup. I keep my camera on a leash. I wouldn't do this if I hand-held the camera without a leash, too many risks in one go if I dropped it!

The 'old masters' (artists/painters) used to work in rooms with the window on their left shoulder so as not to shadow their work with their right arm (right handed). Hence a single strobe slightly to left will conform to the historic norm.

My current (ageing) situation is that I need glasses with between +2 and +3 for reading (depending on where I hold the bhook). My distance vision is clear. For diving, I use a Cressi Occhio mask, very low volume and two eyes. I have a +2 gauge lens in the bottom left corner of my mask. For using my camera, with currently un-corrected vision I can see clearly through a Nauticam 45 degree viewfinder and camera EVF with no correction. My problem - while I can see clearly through the camera, my vision is no longer good enough to spot tiny critters before pointing my camera at them. On land, with reading glasses on, looking at anything distant is obviously slightly fuzzed. For underwater, the solution I am considering is +2 or +3 full lenses for both eyes of my mask. Not half lenses or bifocals. My intent is that will give me the best vision for spotting tiny and camouflaged critters. The side effect of a slightly fuzzed distant vision won't really be a problem underwater. The anticipated problem is: will I be able to use my camera viewfinder through such lenses? Can the built in adjustment of the Nauticam viewfinder negate the +2 or +3 I would have in my mask. Does anyone have experience of such, or am I thinking in completely the wrong direction?

As and when I have time, I will do my bit to turn this into the best resource for underwater photographers.