shooting with natural light in murky waters

I just finished building a custom aluminum u/w housing last month for my Nikon D2X, and since the ocean has been pretty rough off Miami, we decided to take it to the Everglades.

I did not have a strobe at the time so I was forced to shoot available light. The images ware made on 3 different days, and water visibility ranged from 2 feet to ten feet. ISO ranged from 100 to 400, and shutter speeds varied from 1/2 second to 1/80 second. I used the Nikon 12-24mm zoom lens and the 15-55mm Nikon lens.

Most of the images were take at the widest apertures. Shooting distances were 1ft to 3 feet to subject.

You can see the images in my web page.

http://jafphotography.com/

The site is still under construction, so you will find some errors and some gibberish.

Go to the PORTFOLIO tab and open Gallery2 page 1.

Click on the thumbnail to open the photograph, and click on the photogrpah to close it.

I have since picked up a stobe, but I had some problems using it the first time.

Diving the Everglades has been of the most interesting and exiting dives I have ever made.

Hey buzo,

I like the effect. Your photos are different that all the rest of the shots I see people come back with when they visit the Everglades. Have you tried black & white? I think you could do some interesting things with B&W as well as duotones. Photoshop CS3 has some nice RAW conversions to B&W images that could be a lot of fun.

Nice job!

hey buzo,

awesome shots - the natural light ambiance is gorgeous. I'm amazed to see you guys approach the gators so close. How do they react to people? I've only seen them from an airboat tour and was irking to get in the water with 'em. Dunno much about them though.

Not sure how well a strobe would work with wide angle in the murkiness, but not much experiece with that. I think the ambient light looks fantastic - maybe even try a green water magic filter... Cheers,

Chris

Nice stuff.

My first suggestion would be to try a different lens. I always find the stretched looking corners of wide rectilinear lenses look distracting in shots with the seabed. Try using a fisheye - either 10.5mm for really wide stuff - or probably better a Nikon 16mm or Sigma 15mm for a much less distorted perspective.

I really like the colours the way that they are - I think that the colour cast adds so much atmosphere - it would be counter productive to try and get rid of it with colour cast with a filter. As it would get rid of the atmosphere that really makes the shots stand out.

Thanks for sharing.

Alex

I plan to continue diving in the Everglades. It is a very different environment from the ocean, and I would like to document the rest of the animals.

As for getting close to the alligators, I would not do it on my own. The diver in the photographs is Manny Puig. You may have seen him with the Wildboyz or some of his Ultimate Predator Videos. Manny has been diving the Everglades most of his life, and he knows it like the back of his hand. He has a vast knowledge of predatory animal behaviour, including sharks, poisonous snakes, alligators, bears, etc.

When we entered the ponds and the canals, he would identify the dominant alligator and predict their behaviour, including a charge that one of the gators made towards me when I was entering the pond.

I would not get in the water by myself.

Some of these canals are 15 to 20 feet wide and 5 ft deep, water visibility can be less that 3 ft, and there may be 20 gators hanging out in very close proximity. We have come accross several 11 footers. Manny gets very close to them; I hide behind my huge housing. Manny is fearless, I beleive that he projects a confident presence when he enters the water that the alligators recognize and respect.

So in answer to your question Chris, I know very little about their behaviour, but they are very powerful and dangerous creatures. Don't let that mischivous smile fool you.

Alex, I like the ambient light myself, but sometime it is so dark in there that in order to capture the images, the exposures will go down to .5 sec to as much as 2 secs. It is very difficult to shoot in this condition and get sharp images, especially if there is any motion.

Last week I took my strobe in and I was only able to pull one useable frame.

I have an INON Z240 with a Sea & Sea converte,r and I was trying to use it for fill rather than overpower the ambient light, but I could not balance it correctly. The water was very murky and the tree canopy covering the canals took the light levels very low.

Here are 2 shots, one with the flash and one without. I do not like the flashed picture, but I was not able to bring the flash output any lower using ttl.

The TTL seemed to be very hit and miss exposure, and the low light levels produced many soft images.

I am not sure how to add another image. I have tried uploading it several times, but it does not work.