As our snorkeling safaris take place in some of the world's most biodiverse marine ecosystems, home to creatures that are colorful, beautiful, and unique—many of which you've never seen before —it can be overwhelming to know where to point your camera. Of course, you can opt for the spray-and-pray method, where you swim around snapping photos of everything you come across, a bit like a golden retriever in a room full of tennis balls. With this method, you'll surely capture some images of unique creatures, you might even garner the attention of your snorkeling friends on Facebook, awarding you momentary fame amongst the snorkeling digital community. However, to maximize your SD card's potential, reduce post-processing time, and capture the attention of your peers outside the snorkeling community with stunning snaps, we suggest being a bit more disciplined in your underwater imaging mission. With so many underwater subjects to choose from, it's hard to know which ones to focus on for the best result. To make life easier, here's a quick list of some subjects our photographically inclined snorkeling guests opt for. Nemo Anemone fish can be found on just about every single reef within in the Coral Triangle, and in all shapes, sizes, and colors. A cooperative anemone fish will offer you endless options for different compositions. If the anemone fish you are trying to photograph is shy, don't waste your time; you can move on to the next one several meters down. Cuttlefish Cuttlefish are a little bit hard to find, but once you find one, and if it's patient, you can spend hours taking photos of them. Like the anemone fish, there are so many different ways to photograph one, close-ups of the eyes, portraits, or reefscapes with the cuttlefish as part of the shot are all instant
As our snorkeling safaris take place in some of the world’s most biodiverse marine ecosystems, home to creatures that are colorful, beautiful, and unique—many of which you’ve never seen before —it can be overwhelming to know where to point your camera. Of course, you can opt for the spray-and-pray method, where you swim around snapping
White balance is one of the principal camera settings or functions we need to understand in order to bring out the natural colors of the reef and our fishy friends. What is the white balance you ask? Well, in the most simple terms, white balance is a setting included on all digital cameras, usually indicated with a “WB”, which changes the overall color of the picture to accommodate different lighting environments. For example, a land photographer would change the white balance settings when they move from shooting in a sunny outdoor environment to an indoor environment lit entirely with fluorescent light. For us underwater shooters, we adjust the white balance to account for a loss in the red wavelength as we go deeper underwater. If you do not adjust your white balance your images will come back in shades of blue and green when they should be coming back with a full spectrum of colors. How do we correctly set our white balance? Let me explain. Underwater Auto Shooting Modes As I said, as we dive deeper underwater we start to lose certain colors, most importantly red. With this in mind, we need to try to account for this loss of red by utilizing our camera's built-in digital red filter, which is controlled through the white balance function. Many cameras like newer models of GoPro or the Olympus TG series—some of the most user-friendly cameras for snorkelers and divers—will have pretty fantastic auto-white balance settings for underwater shooters. For GoPro users, you'll just need to switch the white balance setting into Auto and just let the camera do its thing. In my experience, and from what I've seen from our guests using GoPros, the colors come back very accurate. For the Olympus TG folks, simply turn the little dial on
White balance is one of the principal camera settings or functions we need to understand in order to bring out the natural colors of the reef and our fishy friends. What is the white balance you ask? Well, in the most simple terms, white balance is a setting included on all digital cameras, usually indicated
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