Spinner dolphins and color challenges

Hi all,

I am back in the water after a 5 year break from photography and the water. I took this in Kona, HI right near the harbor entrance. I struggled a ton with the color...may just be the limits of light, depth, and GoPro.

Spinner dolphins under a boat
Location: Kona, Hi near the harbor entrance
GoPro Hero 3+

Adjustments in Aperture (totally new to this):

Temp: 4345k

Tint: 10

Exposure +0.08

Black Point +14.29

Brightness +0.06

Definition +0.43

Saturation +1.0

Mid Contrast +17.26

Looking for any help, constructive criticism, composition advice, or resources

Thank for the help and inspiration,

James

my humble opinion...

• Nice image overall.
• I like how the dolphins and boat line up.
• I like the blue in the bottom 2/3 of the frame,
• I don't like the surface color in the top 1/3. It looks too washed out/over processed. Perhaps play with your white point or selective white balance
• The blotch or speck or bubbles in the bottom left quadrant is distracting. I would clone out or crop.
• Perhaps consider black & white conversion?

I like the shot. If it were a raw file and being edited in lightroom i think you could really do a lot more with it. But to get ideal color and exposure in all areas of this shot from a jpeg image would be impossible without reducing the overall image quality.

There is a limit to how much color correction (white balance) that can be applied even from a raw file. Here are two versions from the same raw file pic, also from Kona. In one version the color temperature was set to "daylight" using the pull-down selection in Lightroom, the other I maxed out both the color temperature and tint sliders, respectively, all the way to yellow and magenta. The issue is shooting through too much water, which acts as a blue-green filter. The longer the distance the greater the filtration effect of water.