Because sometimes things just go right...

Yesterday was simply an amazing day with my first boat dive for quite some time.

Due to work commitments and life in general I am not able to dive as often as I would have liked to. Throw in Port Elizabeth weather and we have a winning recipe for a very dusty wetsuit.

No, it is not really that bad and we are blessed to have our best diving in winter so now is the time to dive. Yesterday could not have been much better if I could pick it from a catalogue.

In Algoa Bay in South Africa we are blessed with world-class diving in terms of colourful reef growth and diversity. Bahamas-style crystal blue water? Not so much and so I thought I'd show you this pic of life in the office again.

Now I love using three LumeCubes on my rig for amazing lighting. They are practically weightless by comparison and they use internal batteries. They enable me to shoot my camera at 10 frames per second. This I could never do with underwater flash. In Port Elizabeth waters you shoot much more macro than wide angle and three of these little guys give me lovely constant light for video AND more than enough light for high f/number continuous shooting all rolled into one.

But back to what went right with my flash shooting dive.

I find that anything that would have been a split-second adjustment on dry land ends up being rather a mission at depth. Exactly why I am so happy about yesterday's results!

Another reason why I am showing this underwater pic again is because flash completely disorients me. As my eyes adjust to the different colour it is a bit like a quarter second LSD trip of colour the moment that flash fires. Everything is different. VERY different.

This is what makes constant light very attractive. For me at least. Then there is the idea of fumbling with the camera and getting my settings way off what I was going for.

But hang on, I said sometimes thing go right...and yesterday they did. Spectacularly so!

Now I deliberately did not remove all the backscatter in these images. Backscatter is the phenomenon of particulate in the water showing up as bright white specs as the flash lights them up. Light angle can make a huge difference but they are nearly always there.

OK, so we can only bear so many anemone images, right? Anemones are wonderfully static subject matter that will endure experimentation with flash distance, power and angle. Riding a surge does not move them or the reef they sit on. The surge will move you though. But that is part of the fun. Even more so when that pale blue item suddenly turns a bright luminescent purple the moment the flash fires. The flash fires while you were riding past in the surge hoping to get close enough...

This guy? Not so much. He moves constantly. There was a time I thought he would get into my mask if he could.

Sure, if I offered this image for sale I would get rid of all the backscatter here but for now this is purely a fun image. This little guy was hanging around in my face for minutes and I managed to get one decent shot of him. One!

Hardly the best subject matter with which to experiment.

The image I am most happy with is this Cape Silvertip Nudibranch. With my stronger flash camera high centre and the weaker fill flash sitting at the left I also happened to time it well. Those appendages also wash back and forth in the surge.

So I can confirm Gary Player's motto of becoming luckier the more I practice. Photography on dry land gives you a few things to think about. Downstairs in the wet definitely adds one or two challenges. This is what makes it even more rewarding when you capture a good one. Bagging five or more good images on one dive? Ecstatic!

Hopefully this might inspire one more person to take up scuba diving. There is a reason 75% of earth is under water you know.

Happy shooting!

Anton