Say Cheese! (Photo by Ridho Nur Imansyah under Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license.)
While I’m still confused as to where time’s going, it’s Week 11 and hooray, it means we’re a little closer to the holidays! For me, at least it’s something to look forward to and it’ll spur me to keep going through finals and the last leg of the semester.
It’s been 8 weeks of scuba diving content, so I’ve decided to switch it up, and I’d like to touch on another passion, which is photography – the art of freezing time and capturing all these life-changing moments.
In fact, shoutout to Benjamin’s blog which inspired today’s topic too!
However, here’s a disclaimer – I’ve never photographed anything underwater. In fact, most of my photography’s done on land, ranging from street, to food, to architecture.
The photos that I’m most proud of from my Switzerland and Italy trip in 2019
And I have a good reason for that – I was simply more focused on ensuring that I’d make it out alive from an activity I had to sign a waiver for, and in such a situation, taking nice pictures is the last thing on anybody’s mind.
Nevertheless, this blog has also been about the beauty of trying new things, so why not explore underwater photography together?
Most of you would be familiar with Jacques Cousteau, whom I’ve featured, and you may or may not have known that he was a film director too. One of his most well-known works would be The Silent World, and not only was it awarded the highest acclaimed award (Palme D’Or) at the 1956 Cannes International Film Festival, it was also known for being one of the pioneers where coloured documentaries were concerned.
As someone who’s drawn to pretty colours, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the reason why people grew to become so fascinated by the underwater world and were thus inspired to save it. If I ever watched it, I’m not surprised if I’d be too!
However, he wasn’t the first to kick off this whole fad.
It began just a little over a century ago, all thanks to Louis Boutan, who was the first to capture the underwater world on camera, and he was also known for photographing the very first underwater portrait in 1899 as shown.
Photo of Romanian oceanographer and biologist, Emil Racovitza, taken by Louis Baton
Since then, camera gear has evolved greatly from gigantic setups that required anchoring, to small and lightweight counterparts, just like the Nikon Coolpix. With how convenient it has become, it’s as if everyone can be a photographer with no qualms at all, but is that really true?
Then: How underwater photographs were taken with a magnesium light
Now: A Nikon Coolpix W300 (Photo by Jo Zimmy under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license.)
Based on my observations, I wouldn’t say so, and frankly, I wouldn’t trust myself either. Personally, photography’s supposed to capture a moment and its finest and spark positive change. If the environment wasn’t at its best, why take a photo, especially if one was going to end up damaging the environment in some way, be it deliberately or accidentally? It just doesn’t sit right with me, and I’d rather brush up on my diving skills first, because according to this study, cameras accounted for the most contact with the reef and caused the most damage.
Bubble graph showing that cameras made the most contact with the reef
Then again, I really don’t blame you for wanting to take pictures, so what can you do?
Surprise, it’s not that difficult, because all you need to do is don’t touch and keep your distance (yes, the latter comes from personal experience with a clownfish). Use a flash if you must, it’ll capture the colours better, though you might want to do it in moderation, but seriously, just don’t touch. Trust me, you’ll still be able to get some great shots anyway.
Hi Natasha!
Interesting to see how underwater photography has developed over the years! From my experience diving, most of my friends nowadays just carry a go-pro (no flash) strapped to their equipment or held nearby without touching their surroundings. Are there other problems that might come from underwater photography?
Hi Stacia, thanks for stopping by and firstly, I’d like to apologise for the late response as the notification for this comment got quickly buried in my inbox and it was also at a time when I decided to take a little bit of a break to prepare for the hectic week that followed this blog post. Nevertheless, I’d very much love to answer you as this is a topic that I’m quite passionate about too, even when I haven’t done any myself, and trust me, I hope I get to try it soon hahaha!
Based on what you’ve told me, I’d just like to commend your friends for being seemingly responsible divers because it’s honestly no easy feat to be taking a picture while not touching your surroundings and the fact that your friends chose not to carry a flash too is quite interesting too! As someone who loves capturing the true colours of photos and enhancing it, I can see why divers in general would bring flashes with them or flashlights too, but personally, I feel like I’d be just like your friends, simply because I’d prefer to capture the memories on my own rather than being so fixated on capturing everything and end up seeing the whole dive through a lens (and also because I’m quite the clumsy diver at times). I’ve heard many people say that they can’t really remember what they saw when they surfaced after looking through the viewfinder and that’s actually quite sad. Once again, capturing memories are great, it’s the reason why I do photography, but personally, I feel that it’s important to live in the moment too, because for me, my best memories in any context had no technology surrounding them one bit and it just felt more genuine and personal that way.
As for the true query of the question, one of the other problems I’ve come to realise are how people become slightly competitive when they see an exotic species and one classic example I’ve mentioned many times throughout this blog would be the blue ringed octopus. I kept my distance, simply because I knew their bite was fatal, but when other people took notice of it, I noticed how close they crowded around the tiny creature no bigger than a golfball just for that “money shot”. With the blue flashes that the octopus was showing, it was clear that the octopus did indeed feel threatened, and I could also remember how the diver literally lied flat on the sand and ended up causing lots of unnecessary sedimentation in his wake. While it is temporary, we know all too well that constant sedimentation is just not good for the corals, for example, and I presume another problem with underwater photography is that it could pose quite a big risk on the photographer too. In short, it’s not only the environment that could suffer the adverse impacts of these acts but the human too. As much as we’d love to take these shots, we have to be tactful about it and perhaps this might help for your friends, you and I alike to ensure that we minimise the impact that we bring as much as possible, because let’s face it, these creatures will surely be terrified of us too, despite their defensive mechanisms!
Hope this answered your query and once again, I apologise for the incredibly late reply. I hope this response was able to satisfy you though, and do feel free to let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to have a conversation about where this is concerned! ^^ I’d love to hear more!