How Not to Take an Underwater Photo

We see article after article about how to take the perfect underwater photograph. There are articles about how to photograph reefs, how to photograph fish and how to photograph critters so small they could share your wetsuit and you wouldn’t even notice (doesn’t that encourage some interesting thoughts?) However, while those articles are great for those who want to take great underwater photographs there must be a market for an article on how not to take a good underwater photograph since we have seen, and taken, so many bad ones. Let’s get started.

First, to not take a good underwater photograph let’s start with our equipment. You must not familiarize yourself with your camera, housing or strobe, after all there is time to learn that while you are churning up the sand and mud on the bottom of the dive site. Besides, familiarity with your equipment will also allow you to get good focus, good exposure, understand framing and parallax and clutter up your memory with other unimportant facts.

First, be the last off the boat. Mess with your gear, make the other divers wait on the bottom for you, wasting their air, after all, you don't want to waste yours! And don't forget, if all your darting about while underwater causes you to use up your tank, you can always convince some good submariner to let you use his spare regulator, after all, safety first.

Next, don’t worry about buoyancy control. Buoyancy control is for wimps. Make sure to carry enough lead to sink the seventh fleet, it will make you more stable on the bottom while you are churning about breaking down the coral and stirring up sand and debris like an underwater rototiller. Visibility is highly overrated, besides, when you are through no one will want to look at that part of the dive site again for a while anyway.

Definitely don’t show courtesy to other divers. Other divers have to understand you are trying to take poor photographs, this requires figuring out your camera underwater, locking yourself to the bottom with excess weight and flailing around, they need to get over this bit about protecting the reefs and such.

If a dive master or other diver finds something interesting, immediately imitate General Sherman marching through Georgia and barge in front of the other divers, after all, you have a camera, and have a right to see everything first! If your actions scare the critter into premature death or destroy the visibility, well, it was a good thing you were there to take its picture wasn’t it!

Of course, when getting back on the dive boat, make sure they take your equipment first, push to the front if necessary you are an artist of course. Also, be sure to hog the camera bucket or camera table for your gear, you must protect the legacy of bad photographs and protect the rights of poor photographers everywhere.

Finally, every poor photographer must overuse Photoshop or Gimp to over correct his photos, aren’t parrot fish supposed to be bright orange? And of course, once you have destroyed what was original and what was good in the photo, force everyone who even looks sideways at you to look at the two-thousand poor quality photos you took on your last dive trip. And, lest we forget, blame the dive master, the dive site, the other divers for any poor-quality images.

Hopefully this article will convince you that even bad photographers have a place. Now, now, not that place, it is too hot to dive.