DIVE PACIFIC 178 Sept-Nov 2021

SHADES OF COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION
Welcome Back to this Fun Underwater
Photography Competition!
By Dave Moran
It is just fantastic to have this fun photographic
competition up and running again after a long
break due to Covid-19. It is also very encouraging
to receive quite a few submissions. Sophie Fraser
at Sea Tech has done a great job in advising you
all that the Competition is BACK! A big thanks to
you all for entering, appreciated.
Most of the entries could be improved by all the
elements that the judges have mentioned in the
past.
Framing the shot (image) with the Rule of Thirds*
in mind.
Sharp Focus.
Lighting. Light is the added ingredient that lifts
an image off the page! Many im-ages we have
received over the years have suffered from
poor lighting. All the winners in this issue’s
Competition have lit their subject very well using
strobes (flash) or a constant LED light source.
Cropping the image to remove any distracting
black spots or a very bright col-ours eg. A brightly-coloured
sponge that drags the viewer’s eye
away from the main subject within the image.
Editing. Using editing programs such as
Photoshop is totally OK to improve an image! For
example, removing backscatter, cropping and
adjusting colours etc.
Two other elements that can present themselves
on the day of your dive that can give you that
magical winning edge:
The Wow factor!
It’s an image that when people view it, one
of their immediate reactions is, “Wow that is
amazing”. This could be an images of a large
manta ray which divers have been seeing in
northern waters of New Zealand (Poor Knights
Island etc). Or a super sharp micro image of a
cleaner shrimp doing some housework inside a
fish’s gills! This is down to luck – but you increase
your luck by diving more and practicing more.
Originality
This is a tricky element! Many of you will be
thinking, there is hardly anything these days that
has not been photographed – true!
Before taking a shot, seriously consider different
angles and adjusting your light-ing to create a
different visual experience of a subject that has
been photo-graphed many times before.
To practice this skill, it’s best to start with
subjects that are moving slowly or not at all. For
example, crayfish, nudibranchs or scorpionfish.
A good example is our Novice winner, Warrick
Powrie’s nudibranch which we think is from the
Eubranchidae family.
*The Rule of Thirds is a common compositional
technique that divides your frame into an equal,
three-by-three grid with two horizontal lines and two
vertical lines that intersect at four points. The Rule of
Thirds places your subject on the left-third or rightthird
of the frame, creating a pleasing composition.
The team at Dive New Zealand/Dive Pacific
magazines look forward to receiving your
personal masterpieces.
See: www.divenewzealand.com click on Photo
Competition. It’s free to enter.
You can view galleries of all the entries over
www.seatech.co.nz/blogs/shades-of-colour-photo-competition
Thanks for taking the time to enter!
(N) Michelle Brunton
(N) Warrick Powrie
60 Dive New Zealand | Dive Pacific
60 Dive New Zealand | Dive Pacific
(A) Sarah Ford