Page 30 - Q01-2021 Fins Magazine

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the person look really bright and then the rest of last very long, and they don’t output as much
them will look really dark. This look can be really light as strobes.
amazing if it’s used right, with the right amount
of contrast. It can look really arty and really, Another thing you can do. Sorry, just to get a little
really beautiful. It can also just totally ruin a shot, MacGyver on this. You can use things that will
because suddenly you’ve got a really light, bright bounce the light around. So, if you’ve got the sun
face, but the eyes are in the darkness and it behind someone, but their face is in the shadow,
doesn’t really work. if you’re in a white swimming pool, which is what
I have, there’s lots of light bouncing around. So
What you want to do is think about the time of generally, you’ll get a really good fill, the light that
day that you shoot. I have a swimming pool here sort of comes in and fills in the shadows. If you
that faces east west. And I have trees next to it don’t get that fill, you can go and get like a mirror
on the western side. So by about three o’clock or a piece of white board. In photography, we
in the afternoon, it’s totally in shade and what’s have these pop-up reflectors. You can put them
nice about that is you get this beautiful soft light, under the water, and you can actually use that
that doesn’t give you these hard refractions you to bounce the light from behind them back onto
don’t get all these ripples. It lets you kind of move their face. So, these are really good and I’m all
around and get some different angles without about trying to find affordable ways to get really
having to worry about the light so much. cool photos.

The other option is to shoot with the sun behind Pat P
someone, it’s easier to deal with the shadows in I never would have thought about that with the
someone’s face than it is to deal with the bright reflector underwater, but it’s genius at its most
highlights. So if the sun’s coming from behind basic.
them, then suddenly they got this beautiful rim
light around them and the water is going to Brett S
reflect a lot of that light back to them. So that’s a I mean, why would things that work on land not
good way to do it with the sunlight. work under underwater. It just doesn’t register.
But yeah, of course, about reflector underwater is
You can then start to move up to what’s called a great idea.
constant lighting, and these are basically
flashlights that are really made for film and video Pat P
stuff. You can get various prices of these, but Yeah, and usually the simplest solution is the
what they’re going to give you is a is a bit more of best.
a directional light that you can have coming from
the side to light something up so you can use that JW
to balance the sun a bit. If the sun’s quite bright Well, I think we’re just about running out of time
on one side, you can bring this light in and it will here, at least for this interview, but we want to
sort of fill in the shadows on this side. These swing back and with you in the future to talk
are good lights because they will work with any about underwater photography and portraiture.
camera and they are always on. I know our readers, YouTube and Podcasts
listeners are really interested in capturing their
The next step up from this is strobes and strobes images underwater. It’s really challenging for
need an actual camera to work because they them to do it and a lot of them are really super
need a trigger to make them flash. Strobes are intimidated. So just talking like this it just brings it
what I tend to use a lot more because they output into the realm of ‘Oh, of course I can do that.’
a lot more light than a constant lights. But you
only see the effect once it flashes. So constant Brett S
lights are good because you can instantly see It’s not that big a deal. Don’t be afraid of it. I hope
what the effect is. You can point lights on the this helps people to realize they can actually do it
face and see if that looks good or bad or move it and come up with some really, really great stuff.
around to see what looks really good. Whereas
with a strobe you can only see the light once Pat P
you take a photo. You have to constantly take Oh, exactly. Yeah.
photos to see the results and that’s also going up
in price. Constant lighting can be cheaper than JW
strobes, but they’re battery powered, they don’t Okay Brett, you get to pitch your podcast.
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