Our trip to Belize, on the Aggressor liveaboard was excellent and a chance to concentrate on both underwater and also some topside photography.
There were some interesting photographic challenges – one in particular that stands out was the feeding tarpon at Silver Caves. Here’s a description of how I tackled it. – JC
There were always several tarpon in the area, all going in and out of the cave to seize a snack before coming back out into the open.
However, I soon worked out that if I waited inside the cave, among the mass of silversides, the tarpon wouldn’t enter, so I needed a different approach.
I decided to wait outside of the cave and watch what was happening and found that if I parked myself right outside the cave entrance, the tarpon still wouldn’t go inside as they would have to pass directly by me. But when I stayed further back and to the side of the cave, the tarpon began entering the cave again, into the mass of fish.
Once a tarpon was “committed” to entering the cave, I would follow it in. On each attempt, I couldn’t see the tarpon through the wall of fish, so I had to be ready for it to suddenly appear as the silversides parted. I also worked out that I needed to switch on my strobe’s pilot light so that I could see what was going on, and to prevent my auto focus “searching” in the gloom, and being unable to lock on to the subject.
With each tarpon encounter in the cave, I would probably get a chance for only one image in most instances, so it was a difficult and time consuming shot to capture. On some attempts, the tarpon would escape from the cave without me seeing it at all.
Both the silversides and tarpon’s scales are what I call “hyper-reflective” and therefore difficult to light correctly. Careful strobe positioning and reducing the strobe power was the only answer here to avoid the nightmare “whiteout” on certain parts of the fish, which can ruin an otherwise acceptable image. To help with this, I set the camera to show highlights which is a very useful function in helping to avoid this problem.
So, after two dives, I did get an image along the lines of what I was hoping for. Without a doubt, there are better images of this spectacle that can be captured, but I went away thinking that I did everything I could to get the result.
<Read about this trip here>