mako shark

[Martin Wallis]

Shooting sharks while hanging out the cage door, I rolled off about 1200 shots on Thursday. No strobes used, only ambient light therefore the photos were all quite colourless (mostly blue) even though most shots were in shallower than 2 metres of water. I made this one a bw photo which to me solves the colour issue. Any thoughts? All comments and critique welcome.
canon 40D
canon 60mm 2.8 macro lens in ikelite housing
1/250 @ f9
ISO 160

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Martin

Good looking Mako, would like to see one of the color images. Not much color to those except some grey but might look interesting. I've had the best luck with them using a wider angle lens to cut down the water column between camera and fish !! My normal lens was an UW 15 on Nikonos, with an extreme WA you can pre focus and just point the camera !!

As presented would try increasing the contrast range !! Hope you got lots more !!! Looking forward !!

[Marc Mol]

Would agree with Al's comments here, this B&W conv looks a little flat, would like to see the colour version also.
Could do with some more canvas on right and less on the left also some more USM on the Mako. A fine capture all the same.
TFS

[Austin Thomas]

That is a very interesting image Martin. I don't imagine too many people have that in their collection.

Agree on the contrast boost and I like the choice of B&W .

tfs

Austin

[Alfred Forns]

Your right about the difficulty Austin

I have seen two and weren't close enough to even make a record shot !!!

[John Blumenkamp]

Wow... what a subject to photograph! I like the idea of b&w, and would be curious to see what a little more contrast would do, etc. I'd be curious to also see the color version.

Hope to see more... amazing stuff.

[Todd Frost]

Nice capture. Agree with contrast boost, would also like to see color version. UW photography is an area that I hope to get started in soon. TFS
Todd

[Martin Wallis]

Thanks everyone for your ideas. I will boost the contrast and see how it looks, I'll post a colour image in the next couple of days. Alfred, I also used a wide angle (tokina 10-17mm fisheye) for the first few hundred shots and changed to the 60mm macro for the next few hundred:D These makos were only about 5 feet long and stayed around 10 feet or further away from me. I would have loved to have been a lot closer than that with the fisheye lens. Marc, I have a lot of learning to do with PP, so forgive the questions but what is USM and is it possible to add canvas with LR2 which is the only software I currently have? Cheers all.

[Morkel Erasmus]

lovely shot - one not often seen on these forums. I agree on boosting the contrast here as it seems a bit bland and can have much more impact! waiting for the colour version too :)

[arash_hazeghi]

Very interesting photo, underwater photography is less explored in this forum, sure is nice to see photos like this, sure many issues under the water, would love to see the color version. Thanks for sharing this photo with us. those teeth are sharp for sure!