Now and Then

I thought this could be a fun topic. How about you post one of your pictures from when you first started shooting underwater that you THEN thought was a winner. Then post your latest shot that you think is a winner. THEN, post a few comments about what you have learned most from your term as an underwater photographer to get from that first image to the latest one. I would chime in but I am on the road and don't haul all of my pics around with me. I'll post my stuff next week. This could be a real visual and verbal learning experience for everyone, in addition to a lot of fun. So, a recap of the rules:

1. Post an image from your first days as an underwater photographer that you once thought was a good shot.

2. Post one of your best recent images that you really like.

3. Explain the 1-2 most important skills you have learned that helped you get from that first picture to the newest one.

If your first shot is macro, then your second shot should be macro. Same for wide angle. That way we are comparing apples to apples. Can be for any topic (i.e. behavior, blue water, big animals, etc.).

The goal is to visually show how you have improved and also to post a few tips that have helped you make that leap in image quality.

After maybe a month or two, maybe Eric can pareto the improvement suggestions for us so that we can see what the top areas are that photographers suggest to be critical to getting better underwater shots.

Joe

Good topic Joe. SHould prove quite popular i think, i will peruse the hard drives....

Alright, I'll play! However, I was a bit hesitated initially. What happen if all it showed is that only my camera got bigger and improvement is only in the camera but not the photographer (actually, I got a bit smaller but that's a different story!)

The before picture was actually my 3rd trip with the camera but the first trip with a strobe.

Here they are (be kind ):

C4040, Ikelite housing, single DS125 strobe. April 2003

Now, 2.5 years later, 300 odd dives later, my camera grew from a little toddler to a big He-Man setup

Hmm,it was kind of tough to pick out the after picture. The only decent shots initially was a fish portrait as I did not really know how to shoot macro yet, let alone wide angle so strobe placement was all over the place and very few pictures were properly lit.

Nowaday I either go with macro lens or wide and have not really done fish portrait much so it is hard to find a similar comparison. I suppose I am a bit more patient, got better at looking for interesting things to take picture of, figure out how to shoot manually but otherwise there are still plenty to learn

Edit: opps, just remembered that I had a fish picture that I like better. Taken in Lembeh, July 2005, 70-180mm at 70mm, D2X.

oooo, i like that shot of the Cornet Fish...awesome.

Great comparison Boi, definite improvement if you ask me

Ok, here is one of the first shots from my first dive with an underwater camera system. (I don't count the film camera I rented a few months earlier for two dives, the film was lost in the mail so I decided to buy my own rig...and we all know where that leads... )

Anyway, Oly C4040 with Tetra housing. Single Sea & Sea YS90 strobe. March, 2002. I still remember this dive, shooting and seeing the black results in the LCD. Furiously turning knobs and pushing buttons until finally, something showed up in the screen. What's an f stop?? LOL!

It may sound a bit patronizing but, it's sites like this one that helped me learn to take better U/W photos. I don't even want to think about where I'd be if my improvement had to rely solely on my own efforts. But I understand Joe's request, so, if there's just one or two points I'd like to convey, one is: "Get Closer". After you're done shooting the subject, see if you can cut the distance you've been shooting from in 1/2. The other would be, make a plan ahead of the dive. It's really rewarding for me to get a shot that's planned out in advance.

Keeping with the "Togetherness" theme of my first pic...Before I left to dive the Sea of Cortez last month, I'd mentioned to Todd that my goal was to get a nice Sealion shot with the sun in the background:

Rand

Really interesting thread Joe. Thanks for starting it.

Here are my pair. This first one was taken 12.5 years, when I was 18. With a Nikonos V and 15mm. I always really liked this shot - taken of a nurse shark in a hole in Antigua. It was taken during my held held strobe period(!) and I aimed the strobe into one entrance of the cave and had the camera aimed into another hole. I always thought it was creatively lit and an interesting image, but I was never able to get it published when I was 18, and even though I entered it in competitions, it always lost out to shots with more standard lighting.

Interestingly if I showed this image these days I think it would probably do well for me. I think as you get better known as a photographer people are more accepting of your crazy ideas. Back then I was at school and the general critique I got was to try and take pictures more like the ones I could see in magazines!

Anyway, here is a modern one, continuing with the frame within a frame theme. I chose this one because being a filter shot is a picture that would have been impossible to take a few years ago.

The one thing that improved my photography more than any other factor was really understanding lighting (something that I am constantly striving to improve). Really sorting out ambient and strobe lighting is the best thing you can do for your images.

Alex

Alex, this is very demoralizing. You are supposed to show an early picture and said something like you were still trying to figure out what is F-stop, shutter speed, where to point the camera and strobe etc and not already talking about trying to figure out how to do creative lighting. After 3 years I am still not thinking about creative lighting angle

Ok! June 26, 2004 second dive with my Olympus 765 uz, shot on automatic (those guys who shoot manual don´t realize that the camera does everything by itself? ) I thought this was a perfect shot of a nudi...

after this one year and a half I still shoot with the same camera and I´m willing to buy a new non-slr one but I still don´t find one that convinces me yet...

October 12, 2005 one of the nudis I found in Indonesia. Same camera with the addition of ikelite ds125 and inon lens macro:

The things that have made me improve (whatever the amount... ) are:

Understanding general photography concepts (speed, f´s, light...)

Seeing a lot of pictures and, of course,

Diving a lot !!!

My "before" shot is from the first time I ever saw a pygmy seahorse, and I only had a Nikonos V with a 1:2 framer. I was so worried about luggage limits (to the Solomons, at that time 66 lbs) that I only took one strobe, a 20mm lens and the 1:2 framer! It was my first Indo-Pacific trip, and one of my first with a camera. The macro life on this trip inspired me to buy an underwater SLR setup, and dive off the deep end...

I call this one "Can you find the pygmy seahorse?":

My "after" shot is from October in the Lembeh Strait:

I've learned alot along the way, but here were some of the most important:

- Get closer for impact.

- Wait for the moment.

- Get to know your subject.

And a rule that I've always followed:

- If the subject looks at all stressed, leave it be.

Excellent example, Linda.

Joe

Here is an example of a before and after of a Squat Shrimp. I wanted to point out a technical difference in time with this post.

My first attempt of this shrimps dates back from 2003 with a sony D100, a 5 megapixel camera with build in flash. 2 years ago this was a great macro photo for that sony camera... you could see good details of the shrimp, only the internal flash created this cyan cast. With Photoshop we could correct the image almost correctly. Well this was 2 years ago...

Recently I took this picture of the same species with a D70, 60mm macro with strobes. I think the photo speaks for itself. The improvements made in quality over 2 years time are astonishing. One can see the hairs on the legs of the Squat Shrimp.

The technology advantages that we have today didn't exist in the past. With the new highend digital camera's and housings we can take pictures underwater with the same easy of use as we were taking them on land. With photoshop we can improve our images with unlimited possibilities, the creativity of a photographer is now the only remaining limit.

Now it is a matter of diving and finding your subjects you want to photograph. I learned most by looking at thousand of photos of other photographers and of course by deleting thousands of my own pictures which are bad to begin with in order to end up with the best.

Today with our website, we have over 17000 images online and with many species you see the before and the now images. We are currently replacing many images we took in the past with the new pictures we take today. It is sometimes very nice to look at old and new. Here are some examples from our website:

- Squat Shrimps

- Seaslug: Ardeodoris agretta

- Moorish Idol fish: Zanchlus cornutus

This is a nice topic and I hope to see more examples coming up.

Philippe & Guido

I'm contributing with tree pictures.

First one is taken with an Oly-5060, adjusted W-balance and only natural light.

Second one is taken with D70, S&S YS-120 flash.

And the third one is taken with D70, Subtronic Gamma

Well,

One of the things I've learned the along the way since I started taking pictures 2003 is that light is important.

During my first year when I used the Canon Ixus400 and Oly-5060 with no flash I was really pleased with the pictures, but that was before I bought my D70 together with the YS-120 flash. It’s such a big difference.

And now when I look back on the WA pictures I've taken with the D70 YS-120 setup I think they look colorless and badly lighten compared to now when I use the Subtronic Gamma.