Whenever a new camera body or a new set of lights is deployed into my toolset, a shared best practice is going out in the field and testing the new gear in real-life conditions. Underwater camera gear makes no exception. So I went for a camera-test dive with my brother and took the chance to shoot a few pictures to work on new digital development ideas as well.

Despite non-ideal conditions for the water visibility, it turned out to be a good day for the creative image look.

Image look is indeed defined and influenced by a number of factors including technical as well as purely creative players. As we know, all of our choices sum up to into visual elements like color, light, and shadow, that can create visual interest in and around our subject (or destroy it of course).

For this series, besides the specific camera settings, the main key factors I used to convey interest are contrast control, accurate color grading, and effective composition.

Image contrast has been set to create a sense of depth in the picture giving more presence to the elements in the foreground and gradually fading clarity toward the background.

As for the CC I wanted to go for an analogous color harmony. This is particularly interesting in the underwater world, where the vast majority of underwater photographers tend to find ways of boosting colours to the image. Here I consciously took the opposite direction actually simplifying some colours in order to make the image more pleasing to the eye. Certainly the lake environment played a big role in this creative decision as its green-based atmosphere inspired a slightly ‘muted’ version of reality, confirming that creative decisions are tightly connected with the subject and they must be thoughtfully calibrated to be effective.

Thank you for watching.