Paradise Reef Night Dive

Well, I've been told since I started shooting underwater, if you think your close, get closer. For those that are unfamiliar with underwater photography, a good strobe is a huge must have. The color spectrum is lost as you go deeper so to bring it back, you need to add white light. But water has particles generally not visible to the naked eye. As the light is added the risk of experiencing what is called "backscatter". This is where the particles reflect the light back to the lense creating pictures with white spots and requiring a great deal of cleaning with software to gain a useable image.
Another factor is the magnification of the water, where things appear 25% larger or closer than they really are.This causes one to think they are more intimate with their subject than they really are.
Putting everything together, getting closer reduces the particles between you and the subject and using a strobe up and away allows the light to be directed at an angle where the reflected light will be away from the lense, eliminating or reducing the backscatter.
Now, why am I telling all of this? Well, because at the time we were in the islands, we met Irene as a tropical storm, before becoming a hurricane. She dumped quite a lot of rain on the islands as she passed to the south of us and provided a great deal of run-off into the Caribbean reducing the visability for our diving for the week and added alot of extra particles to have to avoid. The images below were shot up close and personal on a night dive later in that week.