Solution Shooting -
The Philosophies Behind
The INON Level One Underwater Photography Course

Steve Warren, INON UK Level One course co - designer and diving journalist on Underwater Stage during "Becoming Lara Croft" shoot. Steve shot behind the scenes footage which was broadcast nationally.

Steve Warren explains why he and Mark Koekomoer developed their own underwater photography course...



Mark Koekemoer, INON UK Level One course co - designer, Diver Magazine photography columnist and contributing author to Martin Edge's The Underwater Photographer

Deep inside a twisting underwater ravine I swam on my back framing Mark Koekemoer against the sunlight. I'm breatholding to let the last of myexhaust bubbles run out of shot. Mark and I are 30 metres under the Indian Ocean off Mikindani, south east



On location - Tanzania - shooting the INON Uk Level One course

Tanzania. We've come here specifically to shoot images - good and bad - for our INON underwater photography courses. The fractured coral foreground and glowing azure water backlighting Mark make this the perfect dive for shooting silhouettes, a topic for our underwater photography courses natural light presentation.

INON UK Level One students with instructor Mark Koekemoer

So with all the major training agencies offering off the shelf underwater photography courses, why go to all the effort of designing our own? And why should you choose our course to help improve your own underwater images? Weren't we being arrogant in believing we could teach underwater photography any better? Underwater photography is the in thing in scuba. People who don't own their own regulators, still own underwater cameras. That's led to demand from divers for courses on how to get better under water pictures and to training agencies creating instructor courses to meet instructor demand. And, of course, to sustained marketing to increase the demand for these underwater photography courses. But wait one. Diving specialties have something of a mixed reputation. And that's normal specialties. Underwater photography isn't a normal specialty.

Most diving speciality courses are very diving skills focused. Take buoyancy control, search and recovery, deep, wreck, night and so on. The skills you learn are progressive diving ones, simply building on scuba skills you learned at a more basic level previously. In truth, these specialties are ones that divers used to pick up by just doing them. They're not demanding. You might expect to be taught these skills by an instructor hugely experienced in these disciplines, but to teach normalrecreational diving specialty courses, an instructor needs very little experience to meet training agency requirements. But it would be a different matter if you wanted to learn cavern, ice or closed circuit rebreather diving. The risks involved in these fields require you to be very well trained and that you build experience gradually because if you don't, you'll probably die. Instructor standards are necessarily set much higher for teaching these programs.

Level One goals are to prepare divers to take greatunderwater photographs easily and consistently in open water

Underwater photography is an unusual specialty. Unlike ice, cavern and CCR diving, it isn't in itself a dangerous activity. There are no special safety concerns beyond the normal risks of recreational diving. Ignorance won't endanger you; it'll just cause disappointing underwater photographs. And no special requirements are placed upon instructors who wish to teach it. But ask any successful underwater image maker about the learning curve they rode to become successful and they'll tell you it is long and tough. And any professional will tell you how often they still miss the money shot by a mile. Underwater photography has little to do with diving and lots to do with photography. Diving is just the way you get to where the subjects are. So to teach underwater photography properly, Mark and I would argue that an instructor needs to be an experienced photographer on land and underwater. To be blunt, the existing underwater photography courses we saw from major training agencies didn't demand too much experience in underwater imaging from the instructor. We wanted to distance ourselves a little.

Student at work - Lynne Pembroke took this on her INON UK Level One underwater photography course

Going to Tanzania was a big deal. We had just relocated to

Underwater Studios from our London base and we were still settling in. Normally, Mark and I take it in turns to take time out abroad for our own underwater photography. That way, Ocean Optics remains open to provide our clients with service and support. But the importance of creating the INON underwater photography course meant that both Mark and myself needed to work together on location. So we closed Optics for just over two weeks, the only time since I took the company over in 1994.

Subject driven - Level One student Maria Woods combinescomposition and exposure techniques to master fish portraiture

Because we were designing a course exclusively for digital compact underwater camera users, we did not take our Nikon underwater D- SLR cameras with us. D -SLR's offer advantages over compacts for certain subjects and situations. For shooting specifically for publications Mark and I would normally choose to use these. But, in certain situations, we prefer to use compacts (even when the shots are for the media). As equipment retailers, we also need to understand all our products, including digital underwater compacts. So we are both experienced with using compact underwater cameras in the field. I'd first used an Olympus 960 1.3MP in Stoney Cove way back in 2000, working subsequently with Olympus C60, 5050, and 5060 cameras and the Nikon Coolpix 990 and 5000. From 2007 I'd used the Fuji F30 and F50. As instructors, Mark and I needed to put ourselves in the exact position our Inon underwater photography course clients would be in. This meant that instead of going on a trip to take underwater images for magazines we would be shooting images and gaining experience solely for developing the Inon underwater photography courses. Our underwater photography courses would need to be tailored for divers wanting to use compact cameras to shoot images for personal and web use. The effort we were putting into creating the course underlined that we understood that compact digital underwater cameras could, used properly, create stunning images. The Inon underwater photography course needed to ensure our clients gained the knowledge to shoot at the highest level.

Experience counts. Mark Koekemoer with Martin Edge at the launch of
"The Underwater Photographer". Martin called in Mark to write the
section on usingcompact cameras underwater.

From the outset, Mark and I were adamant we would not dumb down. Dumbing down underwater photography courses often results from a lazy or inexperienced instructor copping out. We're not lazy and have years of hard won underwater photography experience to call upon. Even so, there were some significant gaps in our knowledge. These often related to subtle and, sometimes not so subtle, differences in how a compact underwater digital camera would react to a shooting situation compared to an SLR. We needed to understand these and not guess. An example would be shooting extreme close ups, or macro, using paired Inon UCL165 close up lenses. Using a compact for this type of photography is a little less straightforward than using a D- SLR. But for anyone going muck diving and critter hunting, this is exactly the kind of digital underwater compact camera rig they'd need to use. In Tanzania we set out to discover the limitations and problems the compact cameras imposed on extreme close up photography and this helped us find solutions we could pass on. Part of the process was cold bloodedly looking at a great subject (in my case a seahorse) and screwing it up. We needed my bad pictures to help us explain how to get the good ones, which Mark shot beautifully. Other screw ups just came naturally!

WPDC32 - Technical information, like exposure control, and equipment's
role, such as strobe use, in successful underwater photography is
explained logically

For explaining colour loss and solutions to restoring colour underwater, we also needed to test theories for ourselves. We knew how to put colour back, but we needed to also know what happened when you broke the rules. Equipped with three Fuji F50 cameras and housings, we dived to 30 metres and worked our way into the shallows. Every few metres that we ascended we paused to take comparative pictures. One camera was used to shoot using auto white balance, manual white balance and in the underwater mode. The second was used to shoot using auto and manual white balance while fitted with a magic filter. The third was used to shoot only with flash. We also experimented by using Inon strobes in combination with the camera settings of the first two to illustrate what happens when you break with convention. These dives gave us the information we were looking for to discuss the different approaches - including the pitfalls - to getting good colour underwater. These shots also provided important background information for teaching other instructors to teach the Inon underwater photography courses through the Inon Underwater Photography Academy's. To often, as a newbie diver, I'd had my questions palmed off with a dismissive "it's in the book". So to avoid being accused of the same crime, we did the research!

The INON UK Level One course had to cover topics from extreme wide angle to extreme macro, illustrated by Level One student Joe Bater's miniature starfish

Mark and I shot a lot of images. We worked deep and in the shallows, with fisheye lenses to shoot scenics, built in lenses to photograph fish and close up lenses to portray pipefish. We took underwater pictures at the brightest time of the day and in the half light as the sun was setting. We tested dynamic range, shot across the entire ISO scale and played with motor drive and autofocus modes. Shooting the Inon underwater photography course was frustrating, revealing and rewarding. It ticked all the boxes you'll experience yourself as an underwater photographer. And, Mark and I believe, that our underwater photography research trip to Tanzania, the things that we learned and can pass on and our attitudes and experience really do set our underwater photography courses for digital compact users apart. Which is what we set out to do.

Steve has owned Ocean Optics since 1994. He is a diving journalist who has written for titles including "Underwater Photography Magazine", "Dive International", "Scuba World", "Dive" and "Diver". He is co - creator of the Visions in the Sea Underwater Photography Festivals. Recently he has worked with Andrew Sutton filming the Bowbelle off Madeira for the BBC and co - directed and filmed a TV special on pilot whales for The Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation.

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