Underwater
Photography
by J. Ramón Palacios
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THE
FIRST LESSON
The
first thing I learned -the hard way- was how very
important is to know how to dive well. One cannot afford the luxury
of a little distraction. Underwater it is extremely easy to loose
the sense of time, depth and orientation.
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Padi
and Naui,
today offer underwater photography courses that
provide the diver with the skills and knowledge to enjoy
underwater photography while minimizing the potential
risks of such activities
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On
certain occasion, being so focused on making adjustments
to my camera, an underwater current dragged me a long
stretch and I lost the location of my group.
It
is not an experience I can recommend. I exhausted my
reserve oxygen while having to swim -on the not
so calm surface and countercurrent- a distance
that felt like 15 miles before reaching the boat while
my cheap snorkel kept getting filled with sea water.
The
ocean deserves a lot of respect. |
The author, when he had lots of hair
and
did not need a thick warm diving suit. |
I'll
never be sorry of first obtaining the Master Diver certification
before venturing again into the sea as an underwater photographer.
Once I achieved the necessary diver's expertise
and awareness, underwater photography became fun, as you can
see in the samples below, and quite fascinating.
| My
ballet dancer wife, kindly stops and turns towards my Nikonos
to allow her picture to be taken, while the guide goes under
to enter a cave in a reef at Cancun. |
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Backlight
picture of my mermaid spouse coming down into a Cancun reef
with a fish school, in the same trip of the above picture.
TTL flash, aimed at the
fish school. |
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