“Abstractionism is an artistic experience that arose in the early 20th century … The term indicates those pictorial and plastic works that go beyond the objective representation of reality.” _{(it.wikipedia.org)}

The idea of generative AI (GAI) is that a system can produce text, images or other media in response to original content and/or prompts (user-supplied instructions to modify the process). Public versions such as ChatGPT or DALL-E are available for online use by anyone.

(Banner photo above by Claudio Ziraldo)

In the first decade of the 20th century, technological advances allowed the printing of photographs in magazines. Fashion photographs appeared for the first time in 1909, in the French magazine La Mode Practique.

Many who start diving, want to share these emotions with family and friends who do not dive, and decide to start taking underwater photographs or videos. For the purposes of this article, I will focus on still photography.

However, it may happen that once we return home from a dive and review our photographs on a monitor, the images do not convey the emotions we felt at that moment they were taken. This might depend on a multitude of factors: the angle, shooting distance, lighting, composition or a wrong choice of lens.

Some readers may surely be shaking their heads now, wondering what is the point of depicting a colorful underwater scene, or a sea creature, in black and white? While others might be quietly and stealthily whispering things about "fine art," since black and white photography is the only true "master‘s" skill, isn't it? The absence of "nice colors" in an image must be art, automatically, right? Well... no, not really, but a general potential does exist. It all depends on the photographer.

When you prepare your camera housing for diving, follow these important steps to minimise the dreaded housing leak!

Step 1: Prepare your housing, unhurried, in a well-lit area, where you will not be disturbed.

Clean the O-ring

Step 2: First, you should remove the O-ring from the door of the housing, using the O-ring remover provided with your housing. Don’t pinch it with anything sharp that may damage it.

The aim is to get you thinking about where you are putting your strobes and where the light is falling—and to encourage you to try it for yourself. Play around and see what works for you (and your subject)! It is the only way to learn.

I am going to assume you have two strobes, with two arms mounted onto two handles on either side of your housing and that you have a DSLR or mirrorless camera with a wide-angle lens behind a dome port, or a compact camera with a wide field of view, and possibly even a wet wide-angle lens.

To do selective color, you must master two techniques: 1) black-and-white (B&W) conversion of color images (there are several methods to do this); and 2) layer masking in Photoshop.

For layer masking in Photoshop, four tools and actions are employed:

• Brush tool

• Setting default foreground and background colors

• Switching between foreground and background colors

• Layer Mask tool

What exactly is digital media marketing? Durand says, digital media marketing encompasses all aspects of a company’s online sales and promotions efforts:

“Well-planned and targeted digital marketing efforts not only drive sales but engage consumers at all stages of the customer life cycle.”

X-RAY MAG: As a digital media marketing consultant, what kinds of things do you advise clients about or what services do you offer?

The sudden rocking of our truck shook me out of my slumber. I struggled to focus on my watch. Has it already been one-and-a-half hours since we set off, after loading the tanks? Looking out of the window at the jungle trail sort of threw me deeper into my world of confusion. Are we going diving? Being based in tropical Asia, diving to me usually means swaying palm trees, sunny skies, and white sandy beaches. So the 20°C air and dusty jungle trail was at the total opposite end of the spectrum for me.