Last year I gravitated to macrophotography – in part because of the mostly bad viz, and in part because of the lack of outings to deeper/more interesting dive sites. Although through necessity, this was not really a problem, as biodiversity is greater at the small scale and I find macrophotography a bit easier than wide angle photography (especially as I am not usually floating through crystalclear, sunlit waters with many ‘charismatic’ animals). One macro trick is to use black backgrounds, avoiding the clutter of gravel, seaweed and assorted debris around the subject. For this you need to light the topic with a strobe and have open water behind it (which cannot be lit up and hence remains black). (Another strategy is using a snoot but I never managed to get that working…) Most recent posts feature examples of this technique but here are three pics I did not get round to posting. Descriptions of animals can be found in the captions.
The black background method also works for wideangle photography. As a bonus I am reposting a collection of old jellyfish photos.
