Had a really fun shoot today with Adam and Annie. Finally figured out the technical part of “Shooting into Strong Backlight on Water” which I should be showing you the results of tomorrow. During the last part of the shoot, Annie and I worked on underwater figure & portrait type shooting. Not as easy as it seems. The main issue is with white balance as most of your reds disappear after 8-10 feet and you get this really strong blueish hue to everything. Learned a very important little trick that can help save some of it, the main thing is to shoot in RAW so it can be recovered.

Back in the days of shooting weddings, one trick we use is that if your White Balance is way off and you don’t want to mess with it, is to just go black and white and you can get some solid results.

I will say that I am amazed at how many different directions the post processing can go and another thing I really liked about todays shoot was the fact that not only did we work out some really unusual technical aspects, it got me thinking about what else I can do to continue challenging myself. I think the next step is underwater portraits, with me wearing my scuba gear using my rig with strobes. Maybe in a swimming pool too, because water clarity is really everything when shooting in water. There were 3 different parts of todays shoot, this was the 3rd. Pretty happy with the results.

Gear used is a Canon 7D in an SPL Surface Water Splash Housing, using a Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye