Photo of the Week: December 13, 2010

Hi Gang!

This week's POTW is an image of a yellow crinoid feeding in the current while perched on a wall in Fiji's Beqa (pronounced ben-ga) Lagoon, a dive site that is highly acclaimed for its spectacular colors.

This week's POTW photograph takes advantage of a technique known as "forced perspective" in which a photographer uses a wide-angle lens that is placed very close to a subject in the foreground of the frame. The forced perspective technique is a very effective way of drawing attention to the subject by making it occupy a larger percentage of the frame than it would if the subject were photographed with a normal lens. Many years ago still photographer and current day filmmaker Howard Hall coined the phrase "close focus-wide angle" when referring to forced perspective shots that are taken underwater with a wide angle lens that is placed very close to the foreground subject. That term stuck and many underwater photographers know the technique as close-focus wide-angle, and even use the acronym CFWA when referring to the technique.

In this particular case I used a fisheye lens, a lens that records a field-of-view of 180 degrees, and I held the lens approximately three inches from the closest arms of the crinoid. In many scenarios when using a fisheye lens I place my strobes as far out to the sides of my camera system as the strobe arms will allow, and I am very careful to pull the front of my strobes at least four inches back behind the plane of my film sensor. However, in the case of this week's POTW image I had to pull my strobes in close to my camera housing and aim them in towards the crinoid in order to be able to light the colorful echinoderm. Had I not pulled my strobes in and aimed them inward the light emitted by my strobes would have missed the crinoid.

When using this forced perspective technique and working with a very short camera housing dome-to-subject distance I often find it helpful to hold the housing away from my eye and take a best guess at my composition when setting up my shot. I look very carefully at the position of the camera before I take the shot, and I check my composition and exposure using the camera's playback features as soon as I take the picture. I look at the image to check composition and use the histogram feature to check my exposure. I often enlarge the picture to check my focus as well in an effort to make sure the foreground subject appears in sharp focus. Then, if necessary, I adjust my focus, and the positioning and power of my strobes before taking another crack at eyeballing my composition. As a rule, I will then take a number of shots before once again checking the composition, focus and exposure.

I find this "eyeballing" technique to be more effective than trying to place my port so close to my subject and compose the picture and focus the lens without accidentally making contact with the foreground subject. Touching many subjects will cause them to recoil, thus spoiling an otherwise great photographic opportunity.

For this week’s POTW image I used my camera in the manual mode, and the process of getting a proper exposure began with taking a light meter reading on the band of blue water in the upper right hand portion of the frame. The meter reading enabled me to determine my f/stop, and in turn, knowing my f/stop allowed me to take a good guess at the strobe power needed to properly expose the crinoid. This technique allows me to get a good exposure on both the foreground subject, the crinoid, and the blue water in the background.

I hope you enjoy this week's POTW, and that the accompanying text provides some "behind the scenes" information regarding the technique used to create the image that helps you create similar images for yourself.

See you next week,

Marty