"The Soggy Photography Guide"
by Neptune
or how not to be a photographer !
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For every photograph in our gallery there are probably two or three that did not make the grade. So in this feature we share some of our humorous experiences of wet photography
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Splish Splash !Choosing a camera
Dolphins is using his Kodak DC215 digital camera unfortunately it is NOT water proof! in the photograph you can even see a stream of little bubbles of air escaping from it. Now he should have used a WATERPROOF camera. The first camera we used for our wet photography was a Kodak single use (disposable) camera. The picture quality was good enough to scan for our early web pages, but it would be expensive to keep buying them.
So we bought a Minolta VECTIS GX-4 APS waterproof camera, it was very easy to use in and out of the water and took reasonable photographs, it lasted a whole year before the film advance drive stopped working. Our next waterproof camera was a Minolta Vectis Weathermatic Zoom, again it was dead easy to use and with a zoom lens took much better photographs of our wet and muddy adventures. Sadly it stopped working last year after almost two years! We are currently use a 35mm Canon Sureshot A1 waterproof camera.
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Glug, Glug, Glug !Under the water
Taking good photographs underwater represents something of a challenge. The photograph on the right shows a rather interesting special effect that we discovered. A Combination of flash and a mass of tiny air bubbles escaping from the photographers clothes underwater produce’s lots of sparkling little diamonds.
The photograph on the left was taken in the sea, although the water looked crystal clear small particles in the water reflected the flash and the subject just disappeared into a foggy haze. The best results we have obtained are in bright sunlit outdoor swimming pools, without using the cameras flash.
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Getting the lighting right.
Taking photographs at night is also rather tricky, in the picture on the right, twillin had a late night swim in the sea. I guess he should have worn something white!
You can even have just too much light. On very bright sunny days strong sun light, produces harsh, high contrast pictures or even bright glows from objects which can be seen in the picture on the left.
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Whooosh Splat!Action photography.
When taking photographs it is important to try to capture some action. But even when you think conditions are just right and your going to get that perfect photograph, things can still go wrong. Your model is just so keen to get soaked and whoosh, they're gone before you see them in the camera's view finder, it can take a lot of attempts to get the timing just right. So its lucky for me that twillin does not seem to mind keep jumping in and out of the pool while I take the pictures.
Some times your models are just as keen to get you soaked, that they keep splashing water over you and your camera's lens producing big blurred patches like the photograph on the left.
Finally there can be just too much water like the spray from the Tidal Wave ride at Thorpe Park, so that everything disappears into the mist, you can just about see twillin standing in the middle of the spray in the picture on the right.
The best results we have obtained for action photography are those using the camera in frame sequence mode, where the camera takes a rapid succession of photographs, such as those used in the FunTwo Screen saver.
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I had hoped to make the London Boat Show 2004, the subject of our first feature for the year, unfortunately the have-a-go sessions of canoeing and surfing did not happen, and although I took a few photographs there was not anything suitable to use as a feature. Of course we will try again next year.
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