Before I begin the story about my underwater camera, I want to inform the newly certified divers that taking up underwater photography is at your own risk. Bringing an underwater camera when you go diving will be
1. Expensive
2. Risky diving
3. Expensive
Why expensive? In no time, you will be adding new strobes, macro lenses, fibre optic, etc and that will cost a bomb !!!
Risky diving. No dive buddy will wait for you to take a photo of a candy crab for a duration of 20 minutes. If you're an underwater dive photographer, be prepared to be left behind by your group.
I bought my underwater camera 3 years ago... not because I was influenced by my underwater photographer friends nor was I mesmerized by their photos of underwater marine creatures. I was going to dive the Red Sea in Egypt and knowing I won't be going back again, I might as well make it memorable and snap some underwater shots of the famed Red Sea
After the Red Sea, I went to Mabul Island, Sabah for the first time and that was for work. I finished work on that Friday and went diving on the weekend and brought along my underwater camera.
I dived for the first time on Mabul Island and man oh man, I've never been so excited before in my entire underwater life. There were critters everywhere !! Frogfishes, dragonets, flamboyant cuttlefish, colorful nudibranches, ribbon eels, etc. What a blast !
I knew I had the God given talent for underwater photography when I produced this money shot of 3 mandarin fishes in one frame. Mind you, the mandarin fishes were in a coral, not in the open as the photo suggest and they're as big as a grain of rice. The current was quite strong that day. It did not help that a lionfish was quite near my face and a sea urchin lurked nearby my leg. I steadied myself, sucked in the air, lowered myself to the coral without startling them and SNAP !!!
No strobes, no macro lens, no Photoshop/Lightroom software.
And after that, the rest is history. I was hooked.
Anyway, enough of blowing my own horn. Here are some of my favorite photos from my simple underwater compact camera :
Will I upgrade to a better camera?
No. Because it is not the camera, it is the cameraman.
3 comments:
LOL you blow your own horn loud enough i can hear it miles away! Enjoy the read of your blog like the others you've written, worse i get the humour part of you i can't help smiling from ear to ear only halfway through the reading! ^_^
but i must give you credit you deserve for taking such good pictures with only a bare compact camera and without any post editing job on the pictures! so you dive snob, continue flaunting to us your good underwater takes, bare, uncensored and original! ^_*
Mossy underwater camera. And also risky because you tend to touch and harm all the corals other uw critters along the way.
Teach me!
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