PHOTO PRO
The Art of Muck in the Philippines by Steven Lopez, MSc, Explorers Photography, CA
T O A VISITING DIVER who expects a coral wall, the first look at Dumaguete can be confusing. The bottom may appear to be little more than dark sand,
offers an advanced option for students ready to work without a visible bottom. The climate-controlled camera room provides space to prepare, charge and review between dives.
scattered rubble, seagrass and the occasional piece of debris. Then a guide points to a frogfish that has been sitting in plain sight. A ghost pipefish resolves from the algae. A nudibranch begins to move across a patch of sand that looked empty seconds earlier. That transition from seeing nothing to seeing an entire community is what makes muck diving such a useful classroom for underwater photography. Students have to slow down, control their position and learn to recognize small changes in shape, texture and movement. The reward is a coastline filled with subjects that can support everything from a first successful macro portrait to a highly experimental image. Atlantis Dumaguete is well suited to that instruction. The resort sits on the water, most local sites are close, and the op- eration runs with a consistency that gives instructors room to teach. Apart from that, it's practical to aim for three dives a day plus a night dive or blackwater dive. A workshop can build four dives around a progression of skills, while blackwater
That rhythm lets us introduce one idea, practice it underwater, review the results and make a focused change before the next dive. Repetition turns advice into a skill. A Place for Macro: We begin with a repeatable baseline. With an interchangeable-lens camera and strobes, here are some settings I usually recommend starting with. These are the jump settings I started out with when learning: 1.Shutter Speed: (Max at the flash-sync speed) around 1/160 or 1/400th of a second depending on the camera. 2. Aperture: (As high as it can go) f/22 if you can 3. ISO: The lowest native ISO, likely 100 on most cameras. 4. Strobe Placement: Directly overhead pointed at the sub- ject on full power. (Adjust as needed). Note: Compact cameras can often be a little different. If your student has a compact camera, I recommend checking out the tutorial video for their model on Backscatter’s website before the class. The principle to teach: Hold the critical feature in focus.
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