Taken with a Canon 7d, 60mm macro lens in a Subal underwater housing, lit with 2 x inon z240 strobes. Minimal PP, other than a small correction to WB, and the removal of a few specks of backscatter (small bits of debris in the water that looks a bit like snowflakes)
Hi Mike - Welcome to BPN and the Wildlife Forum. What an interesting first post. We get very few underwater images. This looks very vibrant with nice colors. The eye looks sharp. Maybe a bit of NR on the bg would enhance. The one thing that keeps drawing my eye is the blob in the lower right corner. You might crop it out or clone it if that is within your ethics.
Thanks for jumping right in and posting your thoughts on other images. It's the best way to learn and get the most out of BPN.
Such a beautiful image! Loved the vibrant colors, agree with Rachel about cloning out the blob in the lower right. Also the crop seems a bit tight to me?
Hi Mike and another warm welcome. Great to see a different approach to wildlife photography - underwater.
I'll be honest, trying to give any tech feedback in this area will be hard as non of us have experienced it, apart from Andrew Mc who just started at the beginning of the year, however will give it a whirl. Not sure if you can reduce the degree of the strobe, but if it's like a flash I might crank it down as it's looking a little harsh towards the lower part of the image. I agree with Rachel about applying some NR to the BKG. I quite like the behavioural aspect, but again agree on either cloning/cropping out what looks to be a bit of disease in that corner(?). I would look to teasing out more detail which is there, likewise just trying to balance out the lighter areas of the subject, as it makes a huge difference.
Mike, i'm doing this remotely as I'm away and therefore colour maybe too saturated/too dark and also may not reflect the actual colours, however I have RP this to try to illustrate about extracting more depth & detail from your RAW file.
Look forward to seeing more.
TFS
Steve
Post Production: It’s ALL about what you do with the tools and not, which brand of tool you use.
Thanks for all the comments. Early days for me here, but having read lots of other threads it's nice to see real crit rather than endless 'nice shot' comments.
PP is far from my forte, so I'll have a go with layers and see if I can lose a bit of the background noise.
Regarding the crop, one of the major differences in shooting underwater as opposed to topside is you need to get as close as possible, as the more water you shoot through, the more the image degrades, and I wanted to show the behaviour. I appreciate it amy not be to everyone's taste though - I do prefer 'environmental' shots whenever possible.
The blob at the bottom was some scarring on the eel. As I'm not entering this in competitions, or claiming it as a record of natural history, I personally think it's ok to remove the blob in PP - thanks for the edit. Obviously, there are times it must stay, but as a bit of fun for me, I have no issues in cloning it out
Last edited by Mike Poole; 03-19-2014 at 04:08 AM.
Hi Mike, just shooting out, but will come back later, however, a very positive and great attitude and hopefully we can also learn from you a little more about the underwater world too. Based on this perhaps we can coax you into joining rather than being a Participant, there are some benefits and also you can upload direct from you HD rather than a Third party and you become part of the BPN community too.
Post Production: It’s ALL about what you do with the tools and not, which brand of tool you use.
Hello Mike ,
welcome to the wildlife forum, lots to see and learn. As i saw you already gave your thoughts to other threads, very good.
A very nice and unique frame to start , simply because taken in a wet environment .
I like the closeup of the moray with little wrasse doing its work.You got good suggestions by Rachel and Steve for improving things .
By knowing how hard the UW photography is (did it myself in the past, not very long though, just with some rental equipment. Nikonos IV was the body called.) i think you did a good job in capturing this image.I dived about 40 dives in the Great Barrier Reef and enjoyed it a lot.
So keep some nice UW stuff coming, i would enjoy it.
Welcome Mike! Your title grabbed my attention. Wonderful behavior captured, and great composition with the wrasse oriented in the same line as the jaws and the eye of the eel well placed in the upper third of the image. I am a complete stranger to underwater creatures and look forward to more of your images.
Hey Mike - this is great. As mentioned, not a genre often posted here, though it's certainly encouraged and welcomed.
Steve's repost brought in some needed contrast and depth lacking from the original post. I would love to see more from your diving endeavours!
Moray eel visits the dentist
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