r/underwaterphotography

Here is a nice little local (SoCal) fringehead from a dive on Saturday

OM-1, 45 macro, 2 x AOI RC strobes

Mother & 3 week old Humpback calf taken yesterday in Moorea, French Polynesia

In my first attempt I constantly had my strobe power too low, exposure too bright, thinking I was emulating the natural light look. Ofc the results were ass. I also had my (single) strobe too low, which resulted in an unpleasant direct light look. I changed that this time by basically always having my strobe as high as possible. I was also willing to use more power and underexpose the background more, fully embracing the fact that it was probably impossible the photos turned out looking like natural light. But I still need to work on minimizing backscatter :(

I think I was able to make the photos a lot more natural looking in postprocessing. I used some masks to even out the lighting so the photos wouldn't look super strobed. Lowering brightness, saturation and detail also helped to make the photos not look like crazy color/detail bombs.

Here is a nice little (see the size of the tentacles) Clark's anemone fish in a totally bleached anemone in Komodo. We saw only a bit of bleaching in the North and none in the South but the South was cold (20C) and green, good for the coral, not so good for the divers. In any case enjoy