Leafy Seadragon: Rapid Bay, South Australia
The Leafy Seadragon is unique to the southern coastal waters of Australia. This gentle relative to the Sea Horse grows up to around 40cm in length and is the o...
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The Leafy Seadragon is unique to the southern coastal waters of Australia. This gentle relative to the Sea Horse grows up to around 40cm in length and is the official Marine Emblem of South Australia with this renown site attracting divers from all over the world.
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Jun, 2016Views
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itsmemacld
July 10, 2016
Welcome to VIEWBUG! This is an environment for everyone who loves to share their photos. Enjoy your stay here. Keep posting! Keep sharing! HAVE FUN! Goodluck! :)
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johnk83776
July 27, 2016
I have been trying for years to get this shot! I am most impressed you succeeded. Can you tell me where you got it?
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
Rapid Bay, South AustraliaTime
Mid afternoonLighting
Because this photo was taken with me just below the Leafy Seadragon with the camera pointed slightly upwards I had to be careful not to point the strobe directly at his eyes, therefore I directed it toward the back of him and had a focus light pointing forward.Equipment
An Olympus TG-4 with an Ikelite housing. The lighting was an Intova 300 lumen focus light with the ocular lens removed to widen the beam. The strobe was an Ikelite AF35 using the camera's inbuilt flash as a trigger.Inspiration
The Leafy Seadragon is a unique animal to the southern coastal waters of Australia and is our state's (South Australia) official Marine Emblem. Rapid Bay is internationally renown for Leafy Seadragons and it's a site where we often take students to complete their diving courses and one where we take many tourists from all around the world to specifically see our "Leafies", therefore it's a real privilege to have so many opportunities to photograph such a wonderful animal. However, despite them being so gentle and slow moving because of their unconventional features other than from side on it's actually very hard to get a good photo of them.Editing
Using the free program, Picasa, all I did was use auto-contrast and then added a tiny bit of highlighting and shadow. Then with just MS-Paint I brushed out about 6 or so specks of backscatter. I also marginally cropped the tip of a fin from a fellow diver from the left hand side. All up I spent less than 5 minutes on post-editing.In my camera bag
Other than the camera and lighting equipment listed above I have other 2 torches (700lm and 1500lm) and a 240lm video light. Then there's just the usual assortment of spare batteries, and extra SD card (or two) and a cleaning cloth. Because we travel so much to dive weight of course is a big factor so I usually carry it on as hand luggage.Feedback
If you have the opportunity to be able to stop and take your time to photograph any sea life, and able to do so without damaging any of the sea bed, coral and grasses below you, take shots from as many different angles as possible and in both landscape and portrait and try to angle the camera up towards any ambient light coming in from above. The visibility on the day that this photo was taken wasn't too bad from this site but being underneath a jetty there wasn't that much natural light to draw from but, again setting my light up as described earlier, I was able to really bring the Leafy to fore which in turn created a great backdrop that subliminally adds a nice touch with the jetty pylon. But of course nothing is more important than respecting the sea life itself. Prior to being able to taking this photo there was a large group of other divers around it, all taking photos and many using strobes so having some tourists with us we waited our turn but advised them of the limited or considerate use of lighting before the dive. It's never advised to interfere with either the animals themselves or their habitat as that could unnecessarily stress them out or expose them to predators.
