Moray Eel Close-up

Blogged by Simon on October 05, 2008 1:01pm | Last updated by Simon on April 19, 2010 11:05am | Category: Underwater Photography | Get a Print Get a Print |

Moray EelThe Moray Eel (Gymnothorax sp.) is another shot from the October South West Rocks trip. This time we couldn’t dive our original destination Green Island due to bad surface current, and had to evade to the sand bank off the beach to a site called Bait Reef instead, which was only about 10m deep but had crystal clear 20m visibility.

We submerged and were initially surrounded by just white sand and blue water with not much else to see, so we aimed the compass in the direction instructed during the briefing and ventured off. After a bit of fin kicking, we arrived at a rocky patch covered in coral and sponges that attracted all sorts of small marine life. It looked like everyone had watched their copy of Finding Nemo, with fish sticking to the rocks, not daring to go out into the open on their own. I had the 105mm macro lens on and shot pictures of a number of small tropical fish and coral polyps, which is when I spotted the Moray Eel in a rock crevice.

I decided to get up close to the crevice, knelt down on the sand and carefully put the camera between me and the animal. I have huge respect for Moray Eels and didn’t want to provoke it, so I moved the flash arms wide apart pointing slightly inwards and set the flash power to about 25%, keeping about 1m distance which is close enough for my taste. I shot about 6-8 times in rapid succession which is possible thanks to the fast reloading YS-250 flash guns and later on settled for this shot which has the best sharpness around the eye. Martin Edge says in his book “The Underwater Photographer” that getting the fish eye sharp in macro photography makes the whole picture look sharper, even at shallower depths of field. Have a look and decide for yourself.

The picture was taken in aperture priority mode at f11 and shot raw like all my new photographs. I used Aperture for postprocessing and exported a version to Photoshop where I used a clone brush to remove an unwanted, out of focus, piece of coral that was half way across the picture above the eye. I also adjusted for saturation to get nicer colors and levels to get more detail definition in the darker areas underneath the animal.

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