Page 104 - AlertDiver_Winter2013

go-to techniques for deep reefs and wrecks, anything with
perceptible ambient light in the background and something
colorful that may be effectively lit by the strobes for the
foreground. I’ve found I can usually hand-hold the housing
with shutter speeds as slow as 1/10. Be aware that at speeds
that slow it is likely that motion from subjects such as fish
or divers will blur somewhat.
Working in deeper depths isn’t the only situation
in which slow shutter speeds come in handy. I still
remember, painfully, the first assignment on which
I really underperformed. I was shooting for National
Geographic to illustrate a few chapters of a book titled
America’s Seashore Wonderlands. In addition to being
my first assignment for National Geographic, it was my
first cold-water gig, and that was challenging enough.
I was shooting rolls of Kodachrome and sending them
from California to an editor in Washington, D.C., who
would tell me what I’d done right or wrong. During that
shoot I had the opportunity to be one of the very first
to take photos from inside the tank at the newly opened
Monterey Bay Aquarium. This was long before digital
cameras, and once I was in the tank it seemed like there
was a fair bit of ambient light. My eyes had adjusted, but
I did not compensate accordingly with the camera. I used
the exposures for the strobe-to-subject values of whatever
marine animal swam before me, but with a shutter speed
of 1/125, the backgrounds were almost totally black. It was
as if I was on a night dive in the Pacific instead of revealing
the beautiful aquaria of that magnificent complex.
102 | WINTER 2013
IMAGING // P H O T O T E C H N I Q U E S