Lighting the Way

For flash photographers, particularly macro, the settings do not need to change at all from day to night. If you shoot with a stopped down lens for a black background it can be impossible to tell what time of day the image was captured, although nocturnal creatures will be the telltale sign.

The challenge to shooting at night is how you navigate the reef, find subjects, and rig your system so that you can see where you are going. The simplest, most direct, solution is to mount a powerful light onto your camera housing. You can also mount lights on your strobes and use the built-in modeling lights.

If the light is oriented from the camera housing directly forward like a scope, the camera will be happiest, and focus lock will be very quick. Directing this light from the strobe heads will sometimes be harder for the camera to see and lock focus.

Solution: Camouflage with Color

A novel solution is to use colored lights. Specifically red lights are widely used as they seem to upset fish less than white light. Simply subduing your lights with colored gels, and using lower powered lights, can help with navigating the reef while providing enough illumination for your camera to focus.

If you are planning on shooting traditional white strobe light, these colors may  show up in your images. To avoid this, some lights will actually turn off briefly when they sense the strobe flashing. You can also angle them away from the scene knowing that your strobe will overpower low powered lights. Mixing colored lights and white light can make your scene a small stage, with colored highlights.

If you like the weird color shifts, called luminance photography, you can accentuate it with dichroic filters for your strobes. At this point you are shooting fluorescence and with the help of yellow glasses, you can look for subjects that are actively fluorescing.

Night Time is the Right Time

Although night diving may sound disorienting, it's well worth the efforts. You'll be given a front row seat to photograph nocturnal marine life. Fluorescent photography will make for some really unique images. And you may be witness to an entirely new set of animal behaviors than you're used to seeing in the daytime. Stick with your buddy, bring a backup light, and have a former-familiarity with your dive site and you'll want to become nocturnal yourself, just for the photography opportunities.