Is underwater photography difficult? Actually, no—at least, not to any significant degree when compared with any other discipline of photography. Each single stage of creating an underwater photograph, if seen in isolation from the rest, is not so tricky. It is the sum of all its parts, as well as mastering the whole, which can appear confusing at times.
The final stage of creating an image is printing it. Despite the fact that we are living in an increasingly screen-oriented world, a printed image still proves the old saying, “If it’s not printed, it does not exist.” This is 100 percent right. As a matter of fact, only a good print can reveal the full magic and spirit of your image. This is what you, and your images, deserve, and this is what we are going to discuss now.
We asked our contributors what their favorite underwater photography technique was and they sent us images and insights into a range of intriguing techniques from close-up wide-angle to use of reflective cylinders and Snell's window to circular fisheye and snoots to using sunballs and sunrays for backlighting as well as how to create black backgrounds.
Back in 2020, we challenged underwater photographers—many of whom found themselves stuck inside or unable to go diving during the pandemic—to search through their image archives and match a topside shot with one of their own underwater shots, in a side-by-side comparison.
In this series of articles on postproduction of underwater images, we have worked a lot on white balance settings, basic and advanced exposure corrections, contrast and curves, advanced techniques of removing colour casts, basic and advanced retouching, final colour boost, cropping and sharpening. Finally, our image is ready! And now, we arrive at the question: What do I do with it?
We asked our contributors what their favorite marine mammal dive was and they sent us tales and images of magnificent whales, playful seals, endearing sea cows and curious dolphins.
The sharpness of a photograph depends on the camera in use, the lens and the camera settings. Every lens has an optimal range with respect to its sharpness performance.
—A rare look behind the making of an iconic image. From conception of the idea to the execution, you will be surprised how little of it was left to chance.
Adobe Photoshop is the number one tool for image editing and provides a large number of editing tools and options—far too many of them actually. But the good news here is that, for editing our underwater images, we only need a few.
We asked our contributors what their favorite shore or shallow dive was and they came back with stories and images of a diverse range of dives from around the world with easy to not-so-easy access off rocky to sandy shores as well as shallow dives under piers.
After the coronavirus lockdown was imposed in my country in March 2020 and all my dive trips were cancelled, I only had one event left on my calendar—an underwater model shoot
