Articles

THE POWER OF UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY FOR OCEAN CONSERVATION
By Denise Pietsch

“You should have seen this reef ten years ago” is a common phrase you'll hear on a dive boat in reference to coral degradation. In a sea filled with shark poaching, coral bleaching, and floating islands of trash, it's easy to get caught up in the downward spiral of climate catastrophe. But that's not helpful. Climate catastrophe leaves us feeling powerless, paralyzed, and hopeless. So what can we do? Well, there is a lot of hope in underwater photography. Grab your gear and dive into the ways your favorite hobby can help save the planet.

“We need to respect the oceans and care for them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.” - Sylvia Earle.

SHARE YOUR PHOTOS
One of the easiest ways to participate in conservation work is something you're probably already doing: sharing your photos. General estimates show that only 6 million people worldwide practice diving. That means that 99.9% of the world's population does not see what divers see. But your photos change that. Your underwater recordings are essential in helping the rest of the world see and understand the delicate beauty that lies beneath the waves and why it is so important to save it.

“It's when you love something first that you'll care about protecting it.”- Luca Martinez

Ikelite ambassador and environmentalist Luca Martinez has made waves with this understanding by leveraging his impressive social media following to raise awareness about the destruction of Florida's Everglades. Other famous underwater photographers, such as Paul Nicklen and Christina Mittermeier, have created organizations based on the principle that photography is essential to helping save the ocean.

But you don't need to be a famous photographer to make an impact. Whether on social media or around the dinner table, sharing your underwater images can help others fall in love with the ocean and want to protect it too.

CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECTS
Participate in scientific research without a PhD. Citizen science projects consist of data collected by the community, such as underwater photos, which scientists around the world use in their research to protect critical marine life. Photo identification projects are an important part of this work.

Protecting the largest and smallest creatures in the oceans begins with understanding them. Submitting your images to photo-identification projects, such as the Florida Manta Project or the Giant Sea Bass Sightings Project, can help establish migration patterns, population size, and breeding grounds, all of which help researchers study and defend marine life.

“We are underwater photographers who take diagnostic images of fish in their natural habitat... and donate our images and data to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and other marine science scientists and nonprofit organizations.”
- Carlos and Allison Estape.

CORAL RESTORATION AND SCIENTIFIC DOCUMENTATION
Underwater photography is also a key element in marine scientific documentation, as well as coral restoration. Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have been using their Ikelite equipment for over a decade to document their research and share it with the public.

Community organizations such as The Coral Conservancy use underwater photography for documentation, education, and nonprofit marketing. Other underwater photographers, such as Austin Greene, a postdoctoral researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, use their Ikelite equipment to document how coral reefs are studied.

Documenting changes in coral reefs over time is essential to help non-profit organizations and research centers obtain funding to continue their work. Underwater photography provides a visual component to this research that often has a greater impact than statistics and figures alone.

“You don't need a fancy college degree or hundreds of dollars to save a coral reef. All you need is a love for our oceans, a pair of fins, and a mask!”
- The Coral Conservancy

REMOVING MARINE LITTER
Leave only bubbles, take only photos. Safely collecting marine litter during your dives is another fantastic way to help the environment. Jess Alexanderson, Ikelite featured customer and author, regularly participates in underwater cleanups with a local team in the Pacific Northwest. This is an excellent way to keep your regular dive site clean and healthy, while fostering a sense of community. If you dive frequently, dedicating one dive per month to collecting marine debris will have a big impact, and studies show it will make you feel better too!

UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHERS MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Ikelite Ambassadors and shark enthusiasts Ken and Kimber Kiefer use their images to help educate people about why it is so important to protect sharks. The PNW Protectors use underwater videography to raise awareness about the Salish Sea and its resident southern orcas. Jill Heinerth uses underwater photography to document the importance of underground water systems in caves. Ikelite Ambassadors Max Bello and Lorenzo Terraneo advocate for the ocean by organizing talks and sharing their underwater photos. Their subjects may differ, but one thing unites them all: conservation supported by underwater photography.

Some of the most passionate conservationists I know are divers. It's no surprise that a place you love to explore is a place you want to protect, and your photography equipment can play a key role in that protection. Environmentalism doesn't always mean lobbying Congress and marching in protests; sometimes it's as simple as sharing your latest underwater photo with a friend or submitting an image of a manta ray to an online database.

Author: Denise Pietsch (pronounced “Peach”) currently manages the Ikelite School of Photography and its social media presence. Denise is originally from New Jersey, where she earned a degree in Dance Therapy. After years of teaching dance, she migrated to the corporate world and eventually landed at Ikelite through the natural career path of fruit distribution and early childhood development. In the end, her lifelong love of photography and octopuses came together in the work she does now. In addition to sharing her energy and enthusiasm with the underwater community, she also manages her dog Joe's social media, collects vinyl records, and enjoys creating memories with friends and family.

William Thompson and his friend and partner, Kenyon, built a metal box into which they placed a camera. Their goal was to take underwater photographs in Weymouth Bay, England. Although these were the first underwater photographs, they were not taken while diving. Instead, the camera was lowered below the surface on a pole from a boat, and the shutter was activated from the surface with a rope. They took exposures on 4-inch by 5-inch glass plates.

Although the black-and-white images captured in Weymouth Bay were inelegant, it was still an unproven fact that the first aquatic photograph had been taken only 20 years after the first photograph and almost 40 years before the first photograph taken while diving.

It wasn't until 1893 that the French scientist Louis Boutan managed to take the first photograph while diving thanks to a watertight case for a small camera. The size of the frame of the first underwater camera was 5 by 7 inches, with an exposure time of 30 minutes.

Boutan quickly realized the limitations of photographing aquatic subjects with natural light, so he proposed using artificial light. He requested assistance from the laboratories in Banyuls-sur-Mer, France, to develop a estroboscopio consisting of an alcohol lamp in an oxygen-filled barrel. A magnesium flash was used to activate the stroboscope. For this reason, many specialists consider Boutan the creator of the "underwater flash."

Boutan's camera with a compressible air bladder could withstand zero pressure, and this design principle is still used today. Additionally, it is important to note that Boutan participated in designing the original diving equipment.

In the 1920s, William Harding Longley studied fish. Intrigued, he decided to photograph them in their natural habitat using color imaging, which had not been done before. This had never been done before. Longley photographed stationary objects, such as corals, anemones, and sea fans. However, this required an exposure of more than ten seconds, resulting in dark images. When he could not achieve the desired result, Longley opted to use magnesium powder, a highly explosive substance, to illuminate underwater subjects more brightly and obtain images with greater illumination and color. Once developed, the images showed the fish in an extremely clear and colorful manner.

The first underwater cameras available for purchase appeared around 1960. The Calypso Phot was a small camera whose development and commercialization involved a man whose life was always related to the underwater world: Jacques Yves Cousteau. This amphibious camera was built to withstand immersion in water up to 40 meters deep. It had an independent non- reflex viewfinder, but it produced error de paralaje (i.e., meaning you could not see exactly what you were photographing. Waterproof O-rings prevented water from penetrating the camera body and the lenses' moving and articulated areas. These cameras remained on sale with different modernized versions under the name "Nikonos" — ranging from the I to the V series — until 2002, when the last model, the Nikonos V, was discontinued. These cameras can still be found on the used camera market today.

Aunque la Nikonos ha sido el emblema de las cámaras anfibias, no ha sido la única, y otras empresas también han fabricado cámaras de este tipo, como la Motormarine de SEA & SEA, Canon, Minolta entre varias otras.

With the advent of the reflex camera, a new solution emerged. Watertight boxes were built with watertight O-rings to hold some models of reflex cameras. Controls were placed on the surface of the box to activate the camera. These advances were significant for taking photographs because, in addition to reflex vision (through the camera's own lens), we could use all the features that these cameras have and that amphibious cameras lack. This is how most underwater photography is done today.

In recent years, the popularity of digital photography and scuba diving has led to the production of a large number of compact digital cameras. Many of these cameras are sold with an accessory: a small waterproof box that allows the camera to be used underwater at depths typical for recreational diving. This photographic system has undoubtedly become popular due to the advantages it offers over chemical photography. These advantages include:

- The memory card's capacity to store thousands of photos as opposed to the usual 36 photos on a 35mm roll of film.

- Immediate visualization of the photograph taken on the camera's screen.

- Better performance in low-light conditions, which are common underwater and allow you to take pictures without a flash or ambient light.

“Look at nature carefully – really pay attention – and if you’re lucky, you might just catch a glimpse of something deeply hidden.” -Albert Einstein

This quote has become something of a personal mantra that I always try to apply to my work, with the intention of creating more interesting and meaningful Underwater Macro Photography & Videography.

Today I am not going to discuss any specific techniques, you can find some excellent articles here on Ikelite’s website, but we will rather explore the varied benefits of diving deep into the world of Underwater Macro, studying marine ecosystems and habitats, and why having a Macro mindset stretches far beyond the focal length.

So, let’s start at the beginning… what is Macro?
By definition, Macro is an extremely unforgiving focal length with an aspect ratio of 1:1. That is to say that at the lens’ minimum focal distance, an animal that is one centimetre wide will fill one centimetre width of the camera’s sensor.

Now imagine that you are trying to isolate focus on that animal’s eye. If you miss focus by just one millimetre too long or too short, you will not only miss focus on the eye, but more likely the entire animal. It is an unforgiving hurdle to overcome, and one that will put a lot of people off in the first instance, but I can attest that once you learn the fundamentals then it will become a lot more intuitive, to the point that you can begin ‘seeing’ the composition before even lining up your shots.

Some professionals are able push this aspect ratio even further – into the realms of Super-Macro – using tools such as diopters, teleconverters, or even software to achieve greater magnification. But to put things plainly, these are all levels of magnification beyond what the human eye can see.

Hidden Worlds
I picked up my first Macro lens around three years ago, and can safely say that I am hooked for life. There are simply more animals in Macro dimensions than can be photographed in a lifetime, so I am here to tell you that there is an entire universe of undocumented Macro subjects waiting at your local dive site, and there is no better time than right now get out there and explore.

While Nudibranchs are widely considered to be the poster-child for Underwater Macro, there are seemingly infinite opportunities at this focal length. For Nudibranchs specifically, what fascinates me more than anything else is their complex relationships with other organisms.

They can be very fussy, with a preference for specific living conditions, or availability of very unique resources. These requirements will then trickle down to their parasites, which may live exclusively on the Nudibranch’s skin, and so you can imagine how the scarcity of these animals begins to increase by orders of magnitude.

If, for example, you are hoping to find the miniature marine Ladybugs, Skeleton Shrimps and Nudibranchs presented in the above video, you will greatly improve your chances by identifying their ideal host; Tubular Hydroids.

By understanding each species’ behaviours, preferences or dependencies – which may vary dramatically between day and night, at different depths, or different times of the year – you will be in a much better position to find what you are looking for. Depending on the species you are chasing, they may exist nowhere else on the planet, and so you may be gifted with an opportunity to make both a scientific contribution or behavioural observation, as well as to create something unique and beautiful.

Artistic License
Crazy or stupid, I wholeheartedly believe that given the right conditions, there is no subject too large to approach with a Macro mindset. By isolating small sections of your subject and emphasizing specific details, you are limited only by the boundaries of your lens’ focal length.

I recently filmed the ‘pregnant’ male Leafy Seadragon in South Australia to demonstrate this concept, and created a storyline that really honed in on the details of his little world.

He is fully grown, at around 30cm in length from head to tail, and knowing that my 90mm Macro lens would be too tight for the Master Shot, I chose to isolate sections of his body to build out the composite parts of this sequence; his incredible crown of leaf-like appendages, the parasitic isopod that has evolved to imitate the complexion of his skin, his brood of eggs, and even a hatchling that is ready to fledge.

Shooting with this detail-oriented mindset really encourages you to study the marine ecosystem and its inhabitants as a whole, rather than waiting for individual animals to turn up out of the blue.

Moving down into the realms of ‘true’ Macro subjects, you will be able to find some of the most vibrant displays of colour in the natural kingdom, with intricate textures, complex shapes, and all of the wonderfully alien features that are allowed to develop in the weightlessness of the Ocean. Up is down and the walls are the floor. Gravity is just an optional extra down here, and with the right subjects in mind, you will be able to experiment with a wide variety of compositions, lighting, angles, and exposure techniques.

“In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” Baba Dioum

Concientización medioambiental.
This philosophy would go on to become the blueprint for wildlife conservation efforts in the early 70’s, by identifying ‘icon’ species, where one symbolic animal would be used to represent the plight of each ecosystem.

It continues to be very effective today, as one of our most predictable ‘human’ traits is that we are far more likely to empathise with cute and cuddly Pandas for example, than their parasitic intestinal roundworms. While both animals are busy performing their individual roles in the balance and biodiversity of the ecosystem, I doubt we will see any “save the intestinal roundworm” campaigns any time soon. Conservation efforts and animal rights policy therefore continue to be something of a beauty pageant, and why ‘ugly’ animals are so often afforded the least protections.

This is why I believe the Underwater Macro community has such an important role to play, and where the most significant opportunities for change can be found.

If we can shine a spotlight on the tiny inhabitants of the underwater world, which are collectively so critical to the health of our planet, then we might stand a chance at saving them. I sincerely believe that if we can create more relatable narratives of even the most alien of marine species, then people will be more likely to empathise, and ultimately help to save them.

Have Fun.
I grew up shooting my dad’s hand-me-down 35mm film camera; a Ricoh KR-10 Super and “nifty fifty” kit lens, which I quickly became infatuated with. This was, and still is, an incredibly capable Sears catalogue SLR from the early 80’s, which my parents had originally purchased with the intention of capturing family memories while my sister and I were growing up.

This camera is now one of my most prized possessions and holds sentimental value beyond what is required for the purpose of this article, but the reason I mention this is to really consider what you enjoy about using your camera. Whether it be photography, videography, freediving, scuba, wide-angle, macro, sharks, shrimps, or whatever else, just remember that you are the most important person on this journey and the camera is just one of the many tools that can be used to fulfil your creative objectives.

I love trying to capture scenes that most accurately reflect the complexity of life-supporting ecosystems such as Coral Reefs, and more recently have become obsessed with symbiotic relationships, parasites and their hosts. I particularly enjoy trying to figure out the extent to which each animal benefits from the other, why these behaviours might have developed in the first instance, and how many millions of years ago did it all begin. I love to ponder the natural history of our planet and it’s pre-historic inhabitants, and often wonder what creatures are yet to be discovered in the deepest, darkest fathoms of our Ocean.

Using a Macro lens, for all of its challenges and limitations, has unlocked parts of my brain that I would otherwise never have been able to access. It has (at least in part) helped me to look much deeper into the hidden world of the Micro-verse, and led me on a journey of exploration and discovery that I would never have imagined only a few years ago.

So go out there and give it a try, and remember to always look carefully – really pay attention – because you might just catch a glimpse of something very special indeed.

James Graham is an Australian photographer, videographer, divemaster, and animal researcher. For the last decade James has taken his life-long passion of photography underwater where he's honed the craft of macro photography. Check out his latest underwater macro videos on Instagram @withgraham, visit his website www.with-graham.com, or connect with him via email: withgraham@hotmail.com