Snorkeling Photography Tips (With Your Smartphone)

You do not need to venture far to take stunning underwater photos with your smartphone. In fact, you can produce stunning images while snorkeling with your smartphone in a dedicated smartphone underwater housing. All you need is some basic tips and tricks that are relatively easy to master and will make you a snorkeling underwater photography maestro.

Master Your Snorkeling and Skin Diving

The bottom line is that to be able to take good underwater photos while snorkeling, you have to be a good snorkeler first. Think of it this way, an experienced car driver can generally safely operate the vehicle while having an indirect conversation with a passenger. On the other hand, novice drivers would find this very difficult since driving is not completely natural to them. The same principle applies to taking pictures while snorkeling. Your snorkeling must be second nature, so you can focus on taking great pics. So how do you make snorkeling second nature?

How to master airway control

The first step to mastering airway control is learning to breathe slowly and deeply in a controlled manner. This increases comfort, reduces panic, and extends safe breath‑holds for short skin dives.

Remember to protect your airway when you inhale, and breathing slowly allows you to feel any water coming in through your snorkel. A good habit to get into at the beginning is putting the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth. This acts as a barrier, preventing you from inhaling water.  With experience, you will develop the feel for controlled breathing and can stop using your tongue as a barrier.

Practice Being Streamlined

When it comes to snorkeling, you should mainly use your legs and feet for propulsion. Developing this skill means you end up with free hands, which you can use to take amazing photos later.

Whenever you are snorkeling or skin diving without a camera, make sure your hands are out of your sides or held behind your back. That way, you will force yourself to become more proficient with your feet and legs. As a bonus, this also makes you much more streamlined in water, improving your snorkeling experience and skill across the board.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAUBDqaQDqs

Develop your duck, dive, and snorkel clearing

Being able to transition seamlessly from the surface to underwater and back repeatedly is a surefire way to tell that you are a great snorkeler and will make taking images a breeze, since you can keep your eyes on the prize underwater.

Learn to develop a compact, controlled duck‑dive: take a deep, calm breath, bend at the hips, and kick smoothly with long fins to descend. Keep your body streamlined to conserve energy.

When swimming around underwater, use long, relaxed fin kicks (rather than short, frantic kicks). Strong, efficient kicks let you cover distance and return to the surface while conserving the oxygen in your tissues.

Snorkeling Photography Tips: Stay Shallow For Best Results

The first and probably most important tip to produce stunning underwater photos with your Android or iPhone is to stay shallow. Staying shallow (roughly 0–5 m / 0–15 ft) while snorkeling preserves the most natural color, contrast, and detail in your photos. At these depths, sunlight penetrates the water well without loss of wavelengths. This means richer reds and warm tones, less blue/green cast, and less backscatter to spoil images

Staying shallow means easier exposure and white balance. Android and iPhone cameras handle shallow, well-lit scenes very well, and auto white balance performs well. Even RAW files retain more recoverable color.

Get As Close As Possible To Your Subject

While staying shallow will help you preserve color and clarity in your image, getting close to your subject will make your underwater Android and iPhone photos truly stand out. Staying as close as possible to your subject when snorkeling dramatically preserves color, contrast, and clarity, and allows you to place your subject center stage.

In terms of how close, that will ultimately depend on the subject. Ideally, you want to get as close as possible to the subject without spooking them. For coral, the closer you can get the better (without touching or kicking it of course!). As a rough rule of thumb, you want to be within 0.5–1.5 m/2-5ft to get the best results. Staying close to your subject means you capture finer textures, patterns, and the subtle color changes in the skin of fish, algae, and coral.

Another great benefit of staying close and shallow is reduced backscatter. The closer you are, the less likely you are to have particles between the lens and the subject. This produces cleaner, more colorful images.

Snorkeling Photography Tips: Learn To Use The Sunlight

Sunlight is your best friend or worst enemy when it comes to taking underwater images with a smartphone while snorkeling. Sunlight can highlight and frame some stunning images, while shadow can mute and subdue your best efforts.

Avoid Shadow When Shooting

Often, when shooting while on the surface, the shadow cast by your body can get in the way. This is because the subject is often best lit when the sun is behind us. Unfortunately, that can mean that our bodies cast a shadow on our subject. Learning to keep an eye out for this unwanted shadow can save many a great picture.

Choose When To Shoot Up or Down

Learning when to shoot up and when to shoot down can transform your pics. When taking underwater shots of marine life with your smartphone while snorkeling, it is often to best to shoot slightly down using the light to illuminate your subject and bring out its colors and textures. This is a great way to shoot, whether you're on the surface or underwater, and can produce excellent results.

On the other hand, shooting underwater seascapes is much better done with the Android or iPhone camera pointed slightly upwards. By shooting upwards, not only does sunlight fully illuminate your scene, but the light rays cutting through the water in the shallows can add a dramatic effect to the image.

Final Thoughts

Taking stunning underwater photos with your smartphone (Android or iPhone) is not difficult, it just takes practice, patience, and decent snorkeling skills. That said, there are a few key principles that, if you follow, will take your images to the next level.