If you’ve ever tried to photograph your family or friends underwater, then you’ll know just how challenging it can be! It is easy to criticize yourself for not having the right gear or experience, but there are a few simple steps that anyone can take to improve their underwater photography skills and capture beautiful model shots.
This article will look at my top five tips and tricks. I’ll assume that anyone reading this has a basic understanding of aperture, shutter speed, and composition. Let’s dig in.
1. Shoot Wide and Close
Wide-angle lenses are the key to shooting people underwater. They allow you to stay close to your subject while capturing the surroundings, and this proximity to your subject is essential.
Light does not travel through water as easily as through air, so the further you are away from your subject, the less natural light you will have available to you. By getting close - much closer than seems natural - you will maximize the light illuminating your subject.
You can get great photographs on anything from a DSLR to a GoPro, even iPhones these days have great wide-angle lenses. Of course, you have to make sure you waterproof your phone first - see our ProShot case options for more details!
2. Consider Your Conditions
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a hundred times: lighting is everything! If you can, choose a clear, sunny day for the best natural lighting. The season is also important, as the visibility in the ocean and freshwater lakes dramatically decreases during hot, sunny spells. Algae blooms are not your friend.
Choosing lower angles of the sun, such as at Golden Hour before sunset, is often a great time to shoot. If you catch the angle right, you can illuminate your subject with those beautiful beams of light that penetrate the surface, for a much more dramatic look.
Make sure that you and your subject stay off the bottom as much as possible. Kicking up sand or dirt is an easy way to ruin your shots, as the visibility will be dramatically reduced. As you get more and more experienced, you could start to incorporate sand into your shots, such as a model kicking off from the seafloor. This requires great timing and focus, however!
Do I need artificial lighting or strobes?
Of course, it is possible to illuminate your subject with lighting underwater. My best advice for people starting out would be to avoid this to begin with, and rely on natural light. Flash photography underwater can introduce a lot of noise and backscatter, as all the little particulates reflect light back onto your lens. The result can be grainy and out-of-focus. There’s a lot you can do in post-processing to brighten your photographs, so I’d avoid using strobes until you’re really comfortable in the water and with your editing.
3. Know Your Camera’s Capability
If shooting with a DSLR, Mirrorless, or compact camera, you’ll have the option of tweaking your settings. I would recommend shooting at an aperture of f7.1 to f9, as this will ensure that your subject is almost always in focus. There will be a lot of movement as it’s almost impossible to stay still underwater, so increase your shutter speed to 1/400 or less in order to freeze that motion and produce crisp, focused shots. There is naturally more noise in underwater photographs due to all of the particles in the water that cloud your scene. Try to keep your ISO as low as possible to reduce noise coming from your camera.
Set your camera to continuous autofocus and shoot in burst mode. This will give your moving subject the best chance of being in focus. You can expect to take hundreds of photographs and only end up with a few that are in focus - this is totally normal. It is harder to get that perfect shot when you’re under the waves, so don’t be disheartened if a day’s shooting yields only a handful of useable photos. Every underwater photographer has been there before!
If you have something like a GoPro or iPhone and you don’t have the option for manual settings, then don’t fret. A lot of them have a dedicated underwater mode or AI-assisted photo capturing to help you get the best shots possible.
4. Accessorize!
Here, a little goes a long way. With a few inexpensive extras, you can transform your setup for photographing people underwater.
A red filter will help to balance the color tones of your shots in-camera, keeping skin tones more natural and avoiding the wash-out blue.
A weight belt will help you, as the photographer, to stay neutral or even negatively buoyant so that you’re not struggling to stay down or flailing around too much.
A dome for your camera helps you to shoot as wide as possible. A standard flat lens, even if it is a wide-angle, will always be magnified underwater. Domes are also amazing for capturing split-level above and below shots, as they correct the aberrations that occur at the air-to-water boundary.
5. Photoshop Is Your Friend
It is very rare to find underwater photographers who do not edit their photos in post-processing. Tools such as Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom - even free software that comes with most phones & computers - are essential for getting that perfect model shot.
With a few simple tweaks to increase contrast, neutralize the colors, and make your subject pop, you’ll notice your photographs looking more professional in no time. After this, read my article on 5 Basic Edits to Transform Your Underwater Photography for a more comprehensive list of tips and tricks!
A final word…
I hope this list will prove useful in your quest for beautiful underwater model shots. Please remember to keep safety at the top of your list for both the model and photographer when shooting, and stay hydrated. Underwater photoshoots are so much fun and totally accessible for complete beginners. Happy snapping!
