Pics from the weekend... Discovery Bay, Jamaica

Spent the weekend doing some dives with friends and was able to shoot quite the bevy of pics...

Overall I think I shot a few keepers, think i'm getting just a bit better at this u/w photography thing, although some shots that I thought I executed well underwater suffer from horrible composition, poor lighting et cetera...

Anyway here we go, comments & critique welcome..

Trumpetfish

Another trumpetfish, had an interesting bluish tinge to it..

Christmas tree worms

Sea Fan

More sunball attempts, not framed exactly the way I would have wanted.. 1/1600s f7.1 for both shots I believe.

Reefscape, love the colors here..

Upside down Jellyfish..

Sponge + pillar coral..

The rest of my gallery can be seen here..

http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgall...r/37363/cat/500

I hate to be the Simon Cowell of Wetpixel but I agree with your own comments there are all kinds of problems, over exposure, subjects not filling the frames, divers with parts of them cut off in the shots etc.

It would be best to pick one or two of your favorite pics and put them in the image improvement section to really get the most out of a critique. If you know the picture is not compsed the way you wanted and the lighting is bad, chuck it. Put the good one on line.

The second Christmas tree worm was your best shot, It filled the frame, was somewhat sharp, had good exposure, many of the others didn't have all these elements. Keep at it though!

-Steve

I think I will be Paula Abdul...

The first thing I want to say is that I see and feel your enthusiasm! I enjoyed your shots. I agree with Photobeat that you should pick 1 (or 2) and put it on the image improvement center and really focus.

My absolute favorite shot was of the sea fan. It is somewhat overexposed, but I really appreciated the graceful composition.

The trumpetfish are interesting...I have taken shots of them before and was always left with a feeling that they were missing something. Yours (like mine) are perhaps neither here nor there. They do not show the entire fish, and they aren't really macro up on the eye or something. Its like - "hmm, half a fish". Always feels cool while shooting but when you look at it topside...

Does anybody out there have an awesome shot of a trumpetfish to inspire us and point us in the right direction? They are so long and thin - how do we even compose something like that?

Keep on shootin', if it were easy everybody would do it.

Thanks guys .

Yeah you do make valid points, the sunball shots are somewhat cut off( the divers at any rate)....

The idea came to me in a flash (shooting sunballs in an object/diver in it), didn't execute it as well as I should.

I shot the seafan at 1/160s at about 35ft or so, i've heard that upping the shutter speed makes the blues richer and deeper.

If you look closely at the sponge+ pillar coral shot you can see where the light hit the sponge and falls off after that.

Lost the diffuser plate on my housing, have to replace it, in the interim I have to deal with uneven lighting.

Jbone check over ddnet, in the show off section for a poster called pp I think, he has an awesome shot of trumpetfish there.

Again thanks for the input and jbone me thinks there's a little difference between you and Paula abdul .

Hey Jam

Gettin some great improvements everytime you go out. One thing i notice right away is the detail in your shots, this means you are getting closer to the subject and not really using the zoom. The strong colours also indicate this. The first trumpet is def the better of the two, closer.

The colours on that reef scene are very psychedelic, but as the others say, not a strong subject. I like both shots of the Christmas trees, two completely different ideas of the same subject, most would prefer the second, but i like the first cuz of the depth and a nice blue in the top third.

The jelly, i know what you are trying to do with a good diagonal...but... too much dead space on the right, a stronger colour would work better, like a sponge or something.... but you can't control the sand.. in that situation i would concentrate more on the full jelly and perhaps the contours in the skirt as opposed to adding the sand. Fill the frame as much as possible with subjects that sit on sand, sand tends to overexpose easy and distract from your subject.

Last shot.... yer a bit phallic there aren't you?! Great colours, a faster shutter would darken that background sky a touch and make it a little more blue. I like it..

Sorry, i don't know who i am... i only know of Simon and Paula...

Are you staying at the research lab there? I did a stint with Earthwatch based in Discovery Bay...

~Matt Segal

Actually yes I was staying at the marine lab there, just beside the bauxite port..

I'm a member of the local university scuba club so we stayed there an did some training + recreational dives over the weekend B).

EDIT- Took a look at your website, great phoots and some lovely gear there too .

Btw, one of the guys that was staying there also had a Canon 20D in an Ike housing with an Ike DS-125 strobe...

Gear envy.. .