This shot is from our weekend dive at Shelly Beach. Surprise, surprise, despite the Sydney Morning Herald’s reports, no blood crazed sharks in sight and we got the Blue Groper from the previous post, some footballers and lots of small fish I have yet to identify instead.

According to Australian Marine Life, Graham Edgar, the species is called Maori Wrasse (Ophthalmolepis lineolata) in the juvenile phase, not to be confused with the same name tropical species, commonly found in Queensland, which is much larger, and greenish/blue. They are very colorful, though it is up to the flash unit to actually bring this out under water, as the typical green water around Sydney turns every color into dirt tones quickly.

I used level adjustments in Aperture to further improve the colors and bring out the lateral pattern. Interesting enough, I had a conversation about this with someone today while looking for books at my favourite shop, and they considered using Photoshop cheating :) Now I suppose while the pattern is really there, you just have to help it shine a little in the low contrast environment it was taken in, you’re not really putting anything in the picture that wasn’t there to begin with. Is editing cheating? Good question. I don’t know.

On the technical side for this shot, we have aperture f/8, 1/250s shutter speed and ISO 400. Background is motion blurred to kill backscatter and exposure was taken down a fair amount as I had blown out the highlights initially. This happened to me a fair bit on Sunday, so I’m going down with TTL flash adjustment to -2EV for the next dive. This is really a trial and error game, but I’m getting there slowly. Anyway, hope you all enjoy the results.

Tags: Australia, New South Wales, Nikon D300, Sydney, Underwater Photography, Wide Angle

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→ yay for Vanuatu and finally some new underwater photography! President Coolidge in April, hope I still know how take photos. # (January 24, 2011 5:30am via twitter)

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• → Reef Creature Identification Tropical Pacific by Paul Humann, Ned DeLoach
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• → Diver With Schooling Mado
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