You’ve Found a Critter, Now What?

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Read about how to find macro subjects.

You first 30 macro subjects are rather intimidating.

But first!

Stop and take a couple of breaths.  Relax.  Think, then act.

Mark the subject so that you can find it again if you drift away a bit.  I’ll stick my Lembeh stick into the sandy bottom in good visibility or drop a lit torch about half a meter (or less) away in bad visibility.  That way if I look down at my camera to fix a problem or have a hand conversation with somebody, I can go back to where the subject is.

Some things to ask about the subject…

Is it shy?  Some subjects like gobies retreat into their home (or just leave the area) when you approach.  They’re afraid that you’re going to eat them.  With these animals, you have to go slow and steady when you move around them.

Does it hate white light?  Shrimp and crabs are notorious for not liking white light.  It hurts their eyes.  With these creatures, you have to either use a red focus light or no focus light.  White lights are straight out.  This also means that it’s hard to get photos of them without a strobe.

What are its key features? Every animal has a set of features that really define what they are.

  • Shrimp and crabs: eyes, claws.
  • Nudibranchs: rhinophores, gills, eggs.
  • Seahorses and pipefish:  mouth, eyes, tiny fins, and sometimes a pregnant belly.
  • Gobies and other small fish: eyes, face fringes, dorsal fin.

Which direction is the animal facing and moving?  Most of the best shots are from the front of the creature.  This isn’t always the deal, but understanding where the “face” is can be a good start at how you approach the photo shoot.

Some questions about where you’re at…

Is there another subject nearby?  Sometimes, this happens: there is a better subject nearby.  Or sometimes your subject is in a bad location to shoot (usually facing down or in a crack that you can’t stick a lens and strobes in) but there is another one of the same close by that is in a location where you can shoot.

Where is the current coming from?  Ideally, you want to take pictures while you’re facing into the current to minimize sand in the shot.  Sand is backscatter and that’s bad, mkay?  Sadly, though, most subjects when you find them will be facing into the current, and this complicates life.  So you have to stop and think about where you and your camera can be located in order to minimize the dirt in your shot.

Is the bottom safe to you and itself?  Will you break off coral if you take this shot?  Will you be rolling around on fire coral?  Is there a scorpionfish sitting in the marl that will stick you with venom?  More about safety here.

Approach the Subject

Add or remove your diopter.  Match your diopter to the size of the subject.  I use a flip holder, so it’s relatively trivial to flip in and out on shots.  The one downsize is that I then have to change exposure settings, especially aperture, because the depth of field and amount of visible light change.  Some people screw their diopters in and out, and if you’re one of those people, be sure to mark your subject before you do.

Adjust your strobes.  If there isn’t enough room for you strobes on the bottom, then you’ll have to move them to the top of the lens like Mickey Mouse ears.  Or use a completely different style.  If you keep your strobes off while you hunt, turn them on now.

Get a focus lock.  Lock your focus on the sand or coral nearby.  Or use the focus gear on your housing to move the focus to the desired length away from the lens front.  This will help you find the subject better.  I’ll also make a test shot to wake up my camera and strobes if they went into sleep mode.

Go slow.  Fast means making dust in the water and scaring the subject.  Try to contain your excitement.

Shoot away!!

 

 

See You Underwater!!

–Mike

 

 

 

Behind the Shot: White Rose

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Location: Tulamben, Bali, Indonesia

Dive Site: Kwanji (awesome place to get grilled tuna or jack during surface interval)

Depth: 18 Meters

Story:

I was a student in a workshop run by Irwin Ang and it was a pretty rough day. Being at the end of the dive season in late December, the waves at Tulamben were fairly high and made shore entries hard. We aborted at a dive site the next day.  The surge was killing my stability to take focused shots without motion blur.  I was overweighted by 3kg just to keep from getting pushed around as much by the surge.  That also made water entry even more worse with the big waves: it’s hard to keep your head above the surface when you’re packing 8kg of ballast and no exposure suit.

When the start of the dive is hard, it’s almost impossible to get into the right mindset to go hunting.  Sometimes you can’t find anything because all the creatures are on strike or asleep.  Or it could be that you forgot how to see and you need to just take pictures of anything so your eyes work again.  So I started looking for abstracts to take pictures of.

If you’ve never been to Tulamben, it’s the land of black sand… all volcanic rock.  After every dive, you dig it out of your dive clothes.  It’s awesome for low-key (black background) images.  And it’s easy to see white things on.

I found this tiny white tubeworm, a white thing on the black sand.  It was at the most 3mm across.  This takes a supermacro setup and even with the macro mode on the TG4 I barely had enough magnification to see the subject.  So I zoomed in and used focus lock and manual focus to as close to the lens as I could get.

Lighting was hard–at anything below 12m or so there isn’t enough ambient light.  I had been hand-holding a torch with my left hand alongside the camera.  But the more you zoom (ie, the closer you get to supermacro), the more light you need.  A single torch just wasn’t bright enough.

I almost always carry an extra torch in my right thigh pocket.  So I pulled it out, turned it on, and set it on the ground about 1.5cm to the right of and slightly in front of the tubeworm.  Then I put my other torch similarly on the left side.  This made a “miniature portable underwater macro portrait lighting studio”.  Just like your glamor shots only different.  =)

I did bump the ground once and the tubeworm disappeared for a couple of minutes when it felt the vibration.  Working close with tubeworms, you sometimes have to back off a bit, let it relax and come back out.  They can feel vibration and they can feel moving water.  The trick with a tubeworm on the bottom is to remember where they are because otherwise you’re back to searching on the sandy bottom.

Lessons Learned:

Lighting.  Carry extra.  In the tropics, I usually wear neoprene tech diving shorts with thigh pockets and have one or two more torches clipped off in my right pocket.  This allows me to mark good subjects for friends and add more light when I need it.

The ground can sometimes give you a third, fourth, and fifth hand. Feel free to set a torch down to provide side lighting or even backlighting.  Add colored lights if you feel like it.

When you can’t find a normal subject like nudies or shrimp, look around at coral, tubeworms, etc. Find patterns and abstracts. Sometimes it’s that your brain isn’t in the right mood to look for tiny things and taking pictures gets it working right.

Take a minute to watch the subject and go slow when you set up for a shot.  Some subjects don’t like shadows, the wake of a diver, white light, or vibrations.  Almost always go slow and then 150% slower than that.