Hermit Crab

Blogged by Simon on March 16, 2010 10:57pm | Last updated by Irene on March 19, 2010 4:44pm | Category: Underwater Photography | Get a Print Get a Print |

Hermit Crab (Strigopagurus strigimanus)On the last PADI digital underwater photogaphy course I ran at my local dive shop, we practiced getting close and shooting upwards on what we first thought to be an empty seashell. It was nicely placed on top of a manmade object and nobody spent any time thinking about how it might have gotten up there. Good negative space, stationary object, you can’t ask for a better motive to practice macro underwater photography with.

That was until the empty seashell started moving and turned out to be inhabited by this hermit crab (Strigopagurus strigimanus). It had been hiding inside, away from us the entire time. A quick look into my fish id books confirms: these crabs snatch up empty shells and use them as artificial houses, dragging them around their entire lives to protect the soft parts of their bodies from predators. What a great idea!

Moving around for a crab still means a lot less movement than with free swimming fish, so the entire course got to take photos of the same object which we then were able to compare afterwards. This one here is an example of a typical ‘black background’ shot. It’s exposed with the 60mm macro lens at f/16 for 1/320s. The relatively fast shutter time allows only flashlight bouncing off the subject to hit the camera, while the background remains black. This is a pretty standard technique for macro and has nothing to do with day or night diving (day dive in this instance anyway).

Post processed for level adjustments and saturation in Aperture and vignetting using the Color Efex Pro plugin.

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