My only underwater shoot C&C

[ewick]

This is the only chance I have gotten to work underwater. please feel free to C&C. I want to hear anything you have to say. If there is any way to improve what I have done I want to hear it. Thank you in advanced.

[/URL] ania by pop-a-dot, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[mrstravis]

I'm also a noob but I will tell you what I think anyway. The red thing around the neck is a little distracting and her pose is awkward. She looks extremely uncomfortable. That's all I have, I'm sure one of the pros will be along to help you.

 

[ewick]

I'm also a noob but I will tell you what I think anyway. The red thing around the neck is a little distracting and her pose is awkward. She looks extremely uncomfortable. That's all I have, I'm sure one of the pros will be along to help you.

Thank you for your input. Shooting underwater is way harder than I imagined. Since she had a blue dress on I added the red scarf to add colour to the all blue shades. her 'pose' is just her dancing underwater and not really a pose. once again thank you for the input.

 

[Trever1t]

What I want to know is what are you using for a housing?

 

[Studio7Four]

I'll go a step further and ask what all the equipment is that you had for this shoot. I have a few suggestions, but they may very well be moot if you have equipment limitations.

 

[ewick]

What I want to know is what are you using for a housing?

I don't recall the name of the actual housing unit but it was the most simple one available. I borrowed it and when i came to find out that housing price was 900 bucks, I lost interest in buying a housing unit. So do you ask because you think the image has poor quality or are you asking in a good way?

 

[ewick]

I'll go a step further and ask what all the equipment is that you had for this shoot. I have a few suggestions, but they may very well be moot if you have equipment limitations.

Very limited equipment. Actually i borrowed the housing unit and the camera. the housing is made for canon and I shoot nikon. I am very interested in hearing what you have to say even if i dont have the equipment.

P.s. all I had was a canon dslr (not sure of the model) and 10-24mm and the housing unit. and the pool.

 

[Trever1t]

I was asking because I was curious if it was an affordable unit I could use on my vacation but you answered that as well

 

[Studio7Four]

The reason I was asking about your equipment is that there are things you can do with an SLR which you can't with a point and shoot, and a strobe would have helped. The two biggest drawbacks to this image for me are the dark blue border to the pool cutting across the top half of the shot and the bright light speckling, both on her and on the pool surfaces. Let's assume that those are going to be present (that you aren't going to do the likely considerable post processing to remove them well, and due to pool size and buoyancy issues you weren't going to keep them out of the frame). There are a few ways to mitigate their impact, just as if you were shooting on land.

One is to get separation from your background through using a larger aperture and more physical separation between your model and the walls. Any background blur would help.

The second is to dim the background, and that's why I wondered if you had an underwater strobe available. Just as on land, it's possible to overpower the sun. Light falls off even more quickly underwater, so using a strobe to illuminate your subject while allowing less bounce from the walls (both from your strobe and the sun) would certainly help your subject pop. It would even let you shoot at a different time of day, when the sun isn't contributing as much in the first place. Even if you can't completely overpower the sun, the addition of the strobe would at least even out the light bouncing off of her so that you wouldn't get the light patterns caused by the sun refracting through the water surface turbulance (or at least they'd be minimized).

A few non-equipment related comments:

- First off, I really like the pose. With her leg positions she has created a very dynamic pose while at the same time appearing calm and collected - her face looks very relaxed. The only nitpick I have about the pose is that I think her head is perhaps a touch too tilted toward her shoulder and I wish that her left hand weren't hidden behind her leg.
- I like that you thought ahead and included the red scarf for a splash (no pun intended) of color. I might have tied it around her waist to help spread out the color in the shot (since her lips are the only other real pop, her painted nails are so small they don't grab your attention).
- One thing you can do in post is clone out the small bubbles (particularly noticeable on her right thigh) and the leaf near her left foot.

Don't give up on shooting underwater! I wish I had access to a waterproof housing for my DSLR and to a pool. The underwater photography I've done is while scuba diving. My camera, though it at least has an off-camera strobe, is basically just a point and shoot in a watertight housing.

 

[ewick]

The reason I was asking about your equipment is that there are things you can do with an SLR which you can't with a point and shoot, and a strobe would have helped. The two biggest drawbacks to this image for me are the dark blue border to the pool cutting across the top half of the shot and the bright light speckling, both on her and on the pool surfaces. Let's assume that those are going to be present (that you aren't going to do the likely considerable post processing to remove them well, and due to pool size and buoyancy issues you weren't going to keep them out of the frame). There are a few ways to mitigate their impact, just as if you were shooting on land.

One is to get separation from your background through using a larger aperture and more physical separation between your model and the walls. Any background blur would help.

The second is to dim the background, and that's why I wondered if you had an underwater strobe available. Just as on land, it's possible to overpower the sun. Light falls off even more quickly underwater, so using a strobe to illuminate your subject while allowing less bounce from the walls (both from your strobe and the sun) would certainly help your subject pop. It would even let you shoot at a different time of day, when the sun isn't contributing as much in the first place. Even if you can't completely overpower the sun, the addition of the strobe would at least even out the light bouncing off of her so that you wouldn't get the light patterns caused by the sun refracting through the water surface turbulance (or at least they'd be minimized).

A few non-equipment related comments:

- First off, I really like the pose. With her leg positions she has created a very dynamic pose while at the same time appearing calm and collected - her face looks very relaxed. The only nitpick I have about the pose is that I think her head is perhaps a touch too tilted toward her shoulder and I wish that her left hand weren't hidden behind her leg.
- I like that you thought ahead and included the red scarf for a splash (no pun intended) of color. I might have tied it around her waist to help spread out the color in the shot (since her lips are the only other real pop, her painted nails are so small they don't grab your attention).
- One thing you can do in post is clone out the small bubbles (particularly noticeable on her right thigh) and the leaf near her left foot.

Don't give up on shooting underwater! I wish I had access to a waterproof housing for my DSLR and to a pool. The underwater photography I've done is while scuba diving. My camera, though it at least has an off-camera strobe, is basically just a point and shoot in a watertight housing.

Thank you for your insight and every thing you mentioned makes perfect sense and I totally agree with you. People like you are the reason I ask for c&c I always try to think ahead and picture what will work best, but being under water with out any gear is hard and there too many things going on at once to try and catch all the details. Now that i look at it... more separation from subject to back wall makes perfect sense. i wish I would have thought of that. I din't take any of the bubbles out because I figured it would add to the effect of being underwater. The housin i borrowed didnt allow me to use my flash. it was a housing that was so tight it basically turned my camera into a point and shoot. i will take everything you said and put it to use if I ever get the chance to shoot underwater again. Once again thank you for your input.