Unlocking the Underwater Photography Potential of the Maldives

The Maldives have lengthy been one of many world’s basic dive locations, with the celebrated central atolls thrilling divers with reefs filled with tropical fish and plentiful massive animals. The equatorial location implies that they’re nice year-round, however by comfortable coincidence, when many really feel that point is true for a spring escape, the Maldives are frequently at their peak with their optimum situations of glass calm seas and blue skies.

Photographs by Alex Mustard

Why the Maldives Both Thrills and Frustrates Underwater Photographers

Plenty of parents get their preliminary style of tropical scuba diving right here and create indelible recollections of seeing their first turtles, sharks, eagle rays and extra. It is the place I gained my first scuba qualification earlier than I’d collected any GCSEs, and the recognition of the season noticed me overlapping this yr with the Editor, Mark, and Go Diving Show crowd-thriller Steve Backshall, amongst others.

The scattered castaway islands entice the vacationers, however for divers the draw is the richness of the marine life. Curiously, we underwater photographers have a more-complex relationship with the Maldives. While most skilled underwater photographers may have visited, most return far much less frequently than they do, say, to the Red Sea or Indonesia. For us snappers the reason being that taking pictures within the Maldives is usually much less dependable than different locations. The foremost motive for the richness of those reefs are the robust currents that pump water (and plankton) out and in of the atolls. This implies that whereas usually situations are good for photos, they will rapidly change to uncooperative. Still photographers want time with topics to conjure the particular photographs. I’ve by no means heard a UPY winner’s acceptance speech begin with ‘we were hooked in…’ or ‘we were drifting along and I snapped this as we flew past’. Moreover, outgoing tides usually suck surprisingly murky water onto a dive web site, or if you least anticipate it the present shuts off, the tender corals droop, the neat faculties disperse and the photographic potential drains away.

Every dive briefing within the Maldives concludes with the guides saying that they received’t know the situations till they make a present examine. Like different locations, they’ll know the state of the tide, however the present in anybody spot is way too unpredictable, due to the way in which the primary tidal circulate interacts with the extremely complicated reef topography with farus, kandus, giris, thilas, haas, badhis and gaas (all Maldivian phrases for various reef constructions). For the underwater photographer this makes planning and preparation robust and even easy issues like lens alternative develop into a lottery.

How Modern Wide-Angle Lenses Changed Maldives Photography

But latest years have seen change, not in Maldivian diving, however in underwater images gear. Over the final decade underwater images has been revolutionised with the proliferation of specialist, water-corrected underwater lenses, that really feel bespoke for this vacation spot. So appropriate are lenses like Nauticam’s WWL, WACP and FCP to the Maldives, that I actually suppose it’s time for photographers to reassess how productive this vacation spot may be. The Maldives is not a spot the place we are able to typically get nice photos, advances in gear now make my journeys there as productive as anyplace, dive on dive.

For these not but conversant in jumble of acronyms I spewed within the earlier paragraph, what you might want to know is that they characterize a household of revolutionary underwater lenses launched during the last decade. Each is designed to work with a regular zoom lens in your digicam, changing it to a wide-angle zoom, that may zoom each wider and tighter than any current wide-angle lens, and since the underwater lenses are particularly designed to work in water, they obtain higher picture high quality throughout the entire of the body. It is win-win-win for photographers. We can cowl extra topics, create extra sorts of photos and preserve glorious picture high quality with a extra open aperture – ultimate for these extra distant passes.

Making the Most of Fish Schools Underwater

If you needed to distil Maldivian diving into one adjective it might be fishy. And these wide-angle zooms are good whether or not it’s a small cluster of butterflyfish, or an enormous ball of blueline snapper. I all the time begin by making the colleges themselves my topic of alternative, and there’s a large choice within the Maldives, together with oriental sweetlips, a number of species of snapper, jacks, bannerfish, and hordes of fusiliers. Throughout the dives we must always all the time be searching for pleasing formations, with the fish all lined up in the identical course, for the strongest photos. Some species are extra cooperative than others, and even sure species like blueline snapper differ significantly of their photographic potential, from web site to web site and dive to dive. When it comes collectively you need to work it!

I additionally look to make use of this fishiness within the backgrounds of wide-angle pictures, to provide my photos extra visible depth and a better feeling of a reef thriving with life. Schools of redtooth triggerfish and fusiliers are sometimes helpfully positioned up within the Maldivian water column for the right fishy backdrop!

Photographing Sharks and Turtles with Wide-Angle Zooms

The Maldives is equally famed for large animals, that are additionally good for the wide-angle zoom, as a result of a fisheye alone is often too large. Hawksbill and inexperienced turtles are fairly ubiquitous and lots of reefs have wholesome reef shark populations. At numerous spots sharks will are available in shut sufficient for a portrait with a zoom – open your aperture just a few clicks and velocity up your shutter velocity equally to assist get extra strobe onto them, to cease them wanting too blue.

Manta Ray Photography: Timing, Patience and Positioning

But I can’t say Maldives with out considering of mantas and there are numerous manta dives throughout the atolls, most are at cleansing stations, the place the enormous rays are available in for his or her spa therapy.

Great pictures right here owe much more to the way you dive, than any photographic secret. The greatest encounters give the perfect photos, so resist the temptation to push too shut, let the rays get settled into cleansing and the rewards will come. Personally, I discover the perfect photographs aren’t these when the mantas are actually shut. When they’re proper overhead, it looks like you’re getting the shot of a lifetime, however usually these photos are unflatteringly distorted, and these previous photographs usually look stronger. Again, that is the place the zoom involves the fore.

It is an fascinating time in underwater images, advances in digicam excessive ISO functionality have remodeled the photographic potential of deep diving and darker chilly water locations and now lens tech is making thrilling locations that used to frustrate photographers a number of the best.

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