Yesterday I heard an impressive talk by nature photographer
Gregory Basco at the
Digital Event in Baden, Switzerland. In his presentation Gregory showed a couple of very impressive and artistic images from the diverse nature of Costa Rica including explanations on how the pictures were captured.
Part of the talk covered Gregory's philosophy around the concept of "
raw perfection" (refer to the linked blog post). The approach is around striving for perfection in raw files (no cropping, no cloning, no major post processing) and disclosing and sharing everything which has been done to a photograph.
The approach is around getting the exposure for the entire photograph as well as its composition right directly in camera using a variety of filters, setups of flash, and all kinds of other little tricks.
Some of the examples Gregory presented were astonishing.
One of his compositions involved a short flash exposure of an object in the foreground combined with a longtime exposure of the night sky as background. In order to get both parts of the scene perfectly in focus the focus was readjusted manually during the longtime exposure after the flash for the foreground had fired to the background scenery for sharp exposure of the background sky.
Another one involved the application of a very old technique from analog days called dodging. A beautiful landscape image of a rain forest scenery exhibiting that strong contrast that a perfect exposure within one shot would not have been possible. The foreground of the scenery, the bottom to left part, showed a beautiful greenish forest scenery while the top right part was a forest glade with sun shining in. Hence, the top right would have been heavily over exposed. The "raw perfection" solution was to choose a long exposure, to get the bottom left foreground right, and using a black card to block for some time of the exposure manually the light falling on the top left area of the image. The result is almost a one shot in camera HDR image perfectly exposed in all areas showing the depth and range in the forest scenery.
Many more examples were given. Some of them with creative and elaborate flash and trigger trap setups.
While not that sophisticated I noticed that I am applying a sort of "raw perfection" to my underwater photography for quite some time.
Taking pictures of wildlife in tropical coral reefs or underwaterscapes of mountain lakes is difficult for many reasons.
First of all you have to be a good scuba diver in order to survive the nonviable conditions. Breathing compressed air does not make your brain working more efficiently. And floating in three dimensions instead of moving in two on a stable surface is another challenge.
When it comes to photography techniques you are constantly dealing with low light conditions and with a limited color spectrum. Bringing powerful strobes helps a lot. However, optical conditions are also different for the setup and handling of flash.
My decision to take pictures which need minimal manipulation in post processing was less driven by ethical or artistic motivations. It was more a pragmatic consequence out of laziness. I did not invest into Photoshop but rather into image composition, diving, and camera handling skills.
If I review my underwater photography habits I see many parallels to the principles of Gregory Basco's elements of "raw perfection".
No cropping
My goal is always to control the framing of the image when taking the picture. For macro images this involves going as close as possible, applying diopters, and finding the right angle to have the subjects picture taken. All this without manipulations or destruction of the nature around. Taking the picture should be non invasive.
For wide angle images this is sometimes even more tricky. Wide angle images involve going really close to the subject and bringing in the right amount of light. If you want to capture a dynamic wildlife scene in a nice environment of the reef you are diving all happens within fractions of seconds. You need to get the exposure of the background, the setup of the strobes at the right power for the foreground, the framing and timing right. Usually you have not much more than a single chance since your time is much more limited by your air than on surface.
No cloning
Combining images for nice underwater sceneries is very tempting. It is much easier to take a perfectly exposed image of your non moving background and combine it with an animal you shot out in the blue water in front of a neutral background. I always wanted to capture nature from non obvious point of view. My goal was not to generate the non obvious as a digital artist, my goal is to find the non obvious physically in real and show it.
Imagine the image below with a fish swimming in from the dark in the bottom right! - When I positioned myself underneath this soft coral there was a fish standing just below, but by the time I was setup he decided to move. I waited for quite some time for this fish or some other underwater creature to come back but run eventually out of air, so I focused on this beautiful soft coral scenery backlit from the morning sun.
No major post processing
Apart from some minor adjustments to the white balancing and contrast, and in some cases removing some scattering particles, I preserve the raw image as shot in camera.
My experience is that underwater colours are most vibrant if correctly exposed using strobes at the right position and flash power. Every time I work on the colours in post processing I tend to get kitschy results. They are no less artistic but just not the way I experienced them under water.
Listening to Gregory Basco's techniques to achieve "raw perfection" I got new ideas what I could do in certain situations under water. I am looking forward to my next underwater photography trip to further work on my in camera skills.
See some examples of my recent work at:
www.andreasrmueller.com
