Crescent-Tail Bigeye

Blogged by Simon on January 07, 2010 9:18pm | Last updated by Simon on February 21, 2010 12:03am | Category: Underwater Photography | Get a Print Get a Print |

Crescent-Tail Bigeye (Priacantus Hamrur)To be very honest with you – I don’t consider myself a routined or seasoned underwater photographer. Almost every dive something happens that changes the plan. I get easily confused or distracted, I use the entirely wrong camera settings or I’m just too late adjusting things and the fish have gone elsewhere. It happens alot and I guess somehow it makes the work interesting, because it’s just not that straightforward. Having taken about 2000 images during our trip in Wakatobi last year, I am proud to say this is the only photo that turned out exactly the way I wanted, with the right camera settings, giving me about a ~0.05% hit rate :) At least there is enough room to improve.

I was diving away in 20m depth at “Dunia Baru” with Dale somewhere above me (somewhere? Where is your buddy???) and saw this Crescent-Tail Bigeye (Priacanthus hamrur) approaching slowly at a trajectory that wasn’t entirely disagreeing with my own.

This moment is where I ruin most of my shots, simply by looking at the fish and letting them know I’m there (which is when they like to, as we say in Australia, “bugger off”). I did something right there and looked elsewhere, changing my camera settings to f/11 and adjusting the manual flash to +2.7EV, which is what I need for 1-2m subject distance.

Mr. Crescent-Tail Bigeye was still in about twice that range, so I lowered myself over the reef to get the leather coral (Sarcophyton sp.) into the bottom of the frame, which I thought might add nicely to the foreground with the golden yellow tones, complementing the fish.

What I was hoping for, but unsure about at the time, was the gradation from yellow to blue, with the green tones inbetween over the reef. I had chosen f/11 to get a slightly darker background with the 24mm end of my wide angle lens and planned to light up only the immediate foreground, the rest consisted of good faith and luck. I took two shots as he passed by, this being the first one and yep – everything looked good on the LCD screen, including histogram.

Back at home, I only did minor adjustments for levels, saturation and exposure, but basically ended up getting what I wanted. Wow, it does feel good.

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