Underwater Photography

In this instalment, Alex Mustard focuses his attention on macro, explaining what elements are required to create a truly memorable close-up image

Photographs courtesy of Alex Mustard / www.amustard.com

New underwater photographers are usually

A successful macro photograph starts with a subject and the hunt fuels many people’s addiction to this genre of shooting. While many folks are obsessed with the rarity of a species, I really don’t mind what I shoot. But I put as much energy into finding subjects that are particularly co-operative and conveniently posed. Many macro destinations encourage visitors to create critter wish lists, but I think these are counterproductive for quality imagery. A focus on species turns underwater photographers into stamp collectors, bringing home hundreds of shots of different critters, but almost all are simply recordstyle photos. Also, when diving is focused on finding ever-rarer beasties, there is always the temptation of another subject distracting you from making the most of what you’ve got.

Subject selected, we now need to focus and frame it, a challenge that gets increasingly tougher the smaller our star. Everyone always asks me what autofocus mode is best, but high-quality diving skills are the most-fundamental step as these ensure the camera is stationary, which makes life much easier for every AF-mode and our compositions. An unstable camera must constantly re-focus both for any movements in the subject and the camera. Conditions are also crucial. If we are expecting strong currents or swell, it might be better to defer the macro lens until a later dive.

In supermacro shooting, it is common for photographers to steady themselves. Importantly, this does not mean lying all over the environment, all that is needed is the lightest touch with a muck stick or two finger hold onto the sand or bare rock, not delicate marine life. Where a lot of photographers go wrong is that they think their whole body needs to be anchored down. In fact, only the camera needs to be absolutely stationary and we can achieve this easily with just a two-fingertip hold.

My favoured modes for macro are using a single AF point, which I can move around the frame over the point of the subject (such as an eye) that I want precisely focused. For free-swimming fish I usually use an intelligent dynamic point focus that will track subject movement, once it has locked on. My current cameras doesn’t have eye-tracking focus, but I suspect I will make use of this feature, which is reportedly excellent on the latest mirrorless bodies. I also always use a continuously focusing mode, which keeps the camera focusing to compensate for any motion I create while hovering.

A popular feature tucked away in the menus of most cameras is an option to decouple the AF activation from the shutter release and asign it another button. This means when you press the shutter the camera will not focus. Instead we assign the focusing to a button that falls beneath the right thumb lever on your housing. This allows you to focus and to not focus when you want to, which lets us finetine the focus and composition with small movements of the camera. This is my preferred method for supermacro shooting.

Perhaps the biggest trap in macro photography is thinking that’s the job done. After all, we’ve found the subject and focused it, surely now is the time to click? No, we must also consider our background. Our aim is to create a background that shows the subject off to the maximum. There are many options for macro backgrounds, but you won’t go wrong with any of the big three: black, blue or blurred.

Black backgrounds are the most eye-catching and are particularly effective with colourful and complicated subjects. They require a fast shutterspeed and a low ISO to exclude ambient light and turn it black. The easiest way to get a black

background is to find the angle that lets you frame the subject against open water. Open water doesn’t reflect the flash, so only the subject appears. Alternatively, we can selectively light the subject, either using a snooted strobe or with inwards lighting (we will climb into both of those in future columns). We should aim to maximise the depth of field of the subject by using a closed aperture because the black background will give us an isolated subject.

If there is a downside to black backgrounds it is that they make it look like you only night dive. Blue backgrounds give macro pictures more of a feeling of the sea and work well with fish portraits, behaviour shots and set off any warm-coloured subjects. Blue backgrounds also work best when we try and frame the subject against open water. However, now we want to let ambient light into the picture, choosing a slower shutter speed, a higher ISO and a slightly more-open aperture to achieve this. These shots are easiest to achieve in bright, shallow conditions. The final option is the blurred background, which is our trick shot for when we have a great subject in a less-than-ideal position. The key to this technique is opening the aperture so that the background detail is completely smoothed out. There is no magic setting here, how much we have to open the aperture depends greatly on the size of the subject, but the butterysmooth background always looks classy. n