Alone In The Dark

Blogged by Simon on February 24, 2009 8:27pm | Last updated by Simon on March 02, 2010 8:09pm | Category: Underwater Photography | Get a Print Get a Print |

Alone In The DarkWhen editing all my recent shots from the Barrier Reef in January, I had one left over that I liked and never got to finish. It was taken on a dive at the Cod Hole at Ribbon Reef #10. We were in about 10m of water at the beginning of the dive when this unidentified little fish was suddenly swimming in front of me with the feather star in the background. I snapped away and got this shot of him looking absolutely terrified (might have contributed to that, looking pretty big and scary when approaching him with the camera).

The picture was taken with the 105mm macro lens at f/16 using 1/160s shutter time in about 10m of water so it wasn’t the brightest to begin with – even the color version has a relatively dark background. So when editing it in Aperture, I decided to try the conversion to black&white using SilverEfex Pro and make the bright subject stand out against the darker background. I played with several color filters until I got the contrast right for the conversion and used a Vignette filter to darken the edges, plus some added control points for darking the image in general. I also used dodge in Aperture to accentuate the feather star in the background, which otherwise would be really black.

I’m actually quite fond of the result, it is much more effective than the color version and i’m going to try black&white on more images in the future.

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