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Featured
X-RAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

Developing the Mindset of a Successful Image Maker

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. It is often believed that professional photographers have “special secrets,” which make their shots stand out from the rest, but mostly, it is rather a question of following a proper mindset.

Words:
Rico Besserdich
Images:
Rico Besserdich
Download the full article as pdf ⬇︎
Photo & Video

In terms of underwater photography, we can say that the mindset is the systematic approach to staying organized and getting the best out of our photo dives. If you, for example, tend to run around your hotel room, searching for your housing’s o-ring in the last stressful minutes before the departure of the dive boat, while at the same time, wonder about whether or not you have charged your strobe batteries (and where are those batteries, by the way?), you could definitely use a change of mindset.

X-RAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

Pure Light: Shooting with Ambient Light in UW Photography

Photographing in ambient light can be a choice or a necessity. It is therefore important to develop an adequate sensitivity to ambient light in order to be able to judge whether it is the best option for shooting a particular scene. Claudio Ziraldo offers some insights and tips on how to improve your underwater images.

Words:
Claudio Ziraldo with Alessandro Ziraldo
Images:
Claudio Ziraldo
Striped dolphins, southern Egypt
➥ Download the full article as pdf ⬅︎
Photo & Video
Image
X-RAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

Prepping for Print

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.

Words:
Rico Besserdich
Images:
Rico Besserdich
Prepping for Print. Simulation image by Rico Besserdich.
➥ Download the full article as pdf ⬅︎
Photo & Video

Regardless of whether a photograph is destined for your own wall in your living room, a gallery, or to be sold to a client, to prepare an underwater image in a way that results in a deeply satisfying print requires a different mindset and workflow. This tutorial is meant to guide and help you. Furthermore, it will deal with some fancy but very wrong myths regarding proper printing, which often occupy the minds of many photographers.

X-RAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

Sea Art: Abstractionism in Underwater Photography

How can one capture “abstractionism” in an underwater photo? Underwater photographer Claudio Ziraldo discusses abstract underwater photography and shares some examples of sea art.

Words:
Claudio Ziraldo, with taxonomic search by Alessandro Ziraldo
Images:
Claudio Ziraldo
➥ Download the full article as pdf ⬅︎
Photo & Video

“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)

X-RAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

Generative Fill in Underwater Photographs

Artificial intelligence has been in the news lately, especially generative AI. It seems like every industry is trying to put this technology into their products, including image-processing apps. Michael Rothschild takes a closer look and gives examples in underwater photography.

Words:
Michael Rothschild
Images:
Michael Rothschild
➥ Download the full article as pdf ⬅︎
Photo & Video

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.

X-RAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

Fibonacci Numbers in Underwater Photography

What makes an image a really good one is certainly a question, that, at some point, troubles the mind of every image maker. Is it about the subject, or is it about that specific moment captured? Is it about color, or about techniques used?

Words:
Rico Besserdich
Images:
Rico Besserdich
Download the full article as pdf ⬇︎
Photo & Video

Each of the mentioned aspects deserves consideration, and not every breathtaking image can be entirely explained by just following a checklist, marking the things that were done correctly with a green pen and using a red pen for the failures spotted. Yet, what most humans perceive as beautiful and aesthetically pleasing visually can surprisingly often be explained with math.

Yes, math.

X-RAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

Digitizing Film: Using a DSLR Camera & Macro Lens

Got some old slides and negatives of underwater images that you wish you could revitalize and process in postproduction? John A. Ares describes in detail how one can convert film into digital files by using a DSLR camera and a macro lens.

Words:
John A. Ares
Images:
John A. Ares
➥ Download the full article as pdf ⬅︎
Photo & Video

There are many methods of digitizing film. The methods described in this article are the highest quality and fastest method. Other scanning alternatives to DSLR and macro lens include:

• Getting a drum scan, at US$20 and up, per shot.

• Sending your media to a domestic processing house to digitize your slides, photos and negatives.

• Sending your photos to a foreign processing house for inexpensive copying (risky).

X-RAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

Sequential Shots

The transition from analog to digital cameras has been a boon for photographers, granting them unlimited shots and freedom of movement. These circumstances lend themselves well to the technique of shooting sequential stills. Underwater photographer Claudio Ziraldo shares his insights and tips on taking sequential shots underwater.

Words:
Claudio Ziraldo
Images:
Claudio Ziraldo
➥ Download the full article as pdf ⬅︎
Photo & Video

(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.

X-RAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

Capturing Emotion in Underwater Photography

When immersing ourselves in the underwater world, we experience a flood of emotions—both in relation to the depths and to being in an environment that is not our own, in which we can almost fly. But our encounters with marine life excite us even more, especially with sharks, dolphins and huge shoals of fish, but also small and colourful nudibranchs, or microscopic shrimps. Cristian Umili shares his insights and tips on how to capture emotions in underwater photographs.

Words:
Cristian Umili
Images:
Cristian Umili
Fish photographed from the front
➥ Download the full article as pdf ⬅︎
Photo & Video

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.

X-RAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

Black and White Underwater Photography

People like color. Is any photographer not familiar with the delighted exclamation of the viewer: "Oh, this is so colorful"? This point also applies to underwater photography"

Words:
Rico Besserdich
Images:
Rico Besserdich
Download the full article as pdf ⬇︎
Photo & Video

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.

X-RAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

Retouching Underwater Images

It should not happen but sometimes it does anyway: those annoying little white dots in our underwater images, which detract from the overall impression of the photograph. Known as backscatter, these dots appear when small particles in the water reflect the light from a strobe. The more directly the strobe light hits a subject, the higher the risk of backscatter. That is why a strobe should not be pointed straight at a subject. Indirect lighting (by angling your strobes slightly outwards or inwards but never directly toward the subject) is the main “trick” to minimise or even prevent backscatter.

Words:
Rico Besserdich
Images:
Rico Besserdich
Download the full article as pdf ⬇︎
Photo & Video

Not much can be done with an underwater image that is covered with “white snow,” but to get rid of a few backscatter dots is no big deal. How many “dots” you are willing to remove is up to you, but it also depends on the image as well as how much labour you are willing to invest in postproduction. Just keep in mind that hours spent with the camera underwater are way more fun than hours spent in front of a computer.

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Technically Speaking

Simon Pridmore's aim in writing this book was to examine and record where technical diving came from, how it developed, how it expanded across the world, who the important movers were and how the efforts of a few determined people changed our little field of human endeavour forever.

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Compiled by an international network of top dive editors and world-class underwater photographers, X-RAY MAG is the planet's only truly global premier dive lifestyle magazine. Subscription and downloads are free. Published since 2003.

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