I was lucky enough to spend 10 days in the Maldives in May, and the highlight of the trip (besides getting married!) was diving a couple of times with a BIG school of mantas
The reason (I think) for the schooling was a really big plankton bloom-great for the mantas feeding, but poor for photography! I tried to minimise the effect of the particles by shooting in available light, with a magic filter, but the results were a bit disapointing. I started playing around with the greyscale conversion in Lightroom and these were the result! Feedback is more than welcome! I have never really messed about with greyscale before.....!
Many thanks
All the best
Adam
I really like the composition of the first one, though it seems like you have lost a lot of the midtone detail. There are many different ways in Photoshop to do B&W conversion. If I were trying to do these I might take a look at the different channels in Photoshop, and see if one is better than the others, then use that channel for your conversion.
I saw a video taken in the maldives of tens of mantas and multiple whalesharks feeding in this plankton soup; pretty spectacular, but tough for still photography.
Hi again,
Thanks for the feedback!
I've done some tweeking with the first of them!
Thoughts?
Thank you
Adam
Yes, I think that's better.
I like the high-contrast image: it has a graphic quality that can be lost from too much grey. In fact, I think that this is one of the secrets of a good monochrome image underwater. The Anselm Adams technique of showing very many grey levels is difficult to apply to underwater images, as they tend to have high contrast without the fine gradation of grey tones that you can see, for instance, in a terrestrial landscape.
The composition of your first image is great, and the tonality really works for me.
