Wide Angle Underwater Photography Part 1 - The Basics

This week we are diving into a wide open subject. It’s about understanding the big picture rather than all the macro things in life or underwater.

After spending a good amount of time breaking down all gear, lighting and techniques required to develop your skills and get creative with your macro photography we are now moving onto wide angle underwater image making.

Let me start off by saying that as with all underwater photography you need to be a good diver first and a photographer second. I touch on this in several of my macro photography posts, but this is immensely important. Wide angle photography come with an inherent set of challenges, so if your planning on “shooting wide”, you best make sure your dive skills are top notch.

Ok, now that we have that out of the way, let’s get started. First and foremost, what is wide angle photography? To create a wide angle image you use a wide angle lens. By definition a "wide angle" lens is any lens with a short focal length. Focal length is the distance, in millimeters, from the optical center of your lens to the sensor when your lens is focused at infinity. Ok, sorry, little bit technical there. Some of the more common focal lengths are the very wide 10mm or 14mm to the less wide 24mm and 35mm.

Practically speaking, here is the important thing to remember: the shorter the focal length of the lens, the wider the field of view, and the more you'll be able to fit in your frame. Typically the first types of wide angle shots that might come to mind are landscapes. Your eyes are capable of taking in nearly 180 degrees of a scene at once and when you've got a beautiful view, you typically want a lens that can capture as much or more than what you're seeing.

Underwater photographers tend to use very wide angle lenses because it allows you to get very close to a subject while still being able to include both the subject and background in the composition.

Shooting wide underwater you quickly learn that it comes with a much steeper learning curve than macro photography how the creative opportunities are endless. There’s more to think about with wide angle due to the balancing of both the foreground and background exposure, using both artificial (strobe) and natural light.

Now, onto some basic techniques.

The first and most important rule is get close, limit the amount of water between your lens and your subject.

Try and compose your shots both vertically and horizontally, the results can be extraordinary. A good photographer will shot, review, move, shot, review, move.

Create some contrast, think about your subject its position and its colouration in relation to the background.

Try your best to pre plan your settings, this can be hard if you're new at this type of photography but if your on a trip and as you hit the water a sea lion or whale shark happens to be right there, be ready to get the shot.

This list is just a start and we will get into more specific techniques and gear for certain types of shits in future posts.

Most importantly, have fun and be creative. Few images draw more emotion than a dramatic wide angle underwater image.

Thanks for reading.

Scott

For more stories and images - http://www.scottstevensonphotography.ca/