I had a great dive a couple of weeks ago at Zabargad, in the south of the Egyptian part of the Red Sea. A couple of Longimani showed up and circled us for a while. True to their usual MO, they stayed on the side that the sun came from. I was in the water with equipment for small stuff, which didn't help in getting close to them either. OM-D EM-5 in a NA-EM5 case, with a 45mm Panasonic lens (and two D2000/S2000 strobes that I didn't use and a Nauticam SMC-1, which I didn't use either... )
The action was fantastic, but visibility wasn't amazing at all unfortunately - if you have any editing tips that might improve this a bit I'd be extremely grateful.
Edited shot that took me around 2 hours with the spot removal tool:
Looking at the picture now I shouldn't have shot up, I guess? Eye-level might have been helpful...
Nothing wrong with shooting up. I think it works. perhaps turn the strobes off next time. if the subject isn't very close, you don't get the benefit of the light but all the downside of lighting up particulate inbetween.
I would try it in B&W. Very hard to edit otherwise given the amount of backscatter.
Very basic b&w convert in lightroom. i adjusted the sliders to drive more contrast.
Black and white actually seems like a good idea. Or just living with it and throwing it out.
I like the idea of the Black & White, just about the only way to get anything that looks a little like a shark. I'm thinking you may want to chalk it up to experience and a great excuse to go back and try again. You can get rid of the cloudy look by extreme exercise of the noise reduction and droping the vibrance and saturation then pulling hard on the blacks.
It's an interesting exercise in seeing how much information you can pull out when there is really nobody home.
Cheers,
Steve
Would you look at that, looks like there are two sharks in that picture!
)
