Last year I literally went from shooting Great White Sharks one week to shooting Great White Bears the next. Apart from their names, the two have striking similarities -- both are the apex predators of their environment (OK, white sharks are second behind Orcas) -- both consider seal to be the meal delicacy of choice -- polar bears are as comfortable in the water as on land and are considered a marine mammal -- and both travel great distances in search of food.
Taking these over/unders of the whiteys was tricky -- the cages sit with the top of the cage a foot or more below the surface and there is no way to get out of the viewing window an hoist the camera into position and get a decent shot. Ended up laying on a boogie board on top of the cage with my feet hanging on to the cage to pull myself back when whitey got a little too close. Had a couple of fun times with getting tail slapped by a passing whitey after I had curled back onto the protection of the cage. The neatest though was right after I started shooting from the boogie bard, one whitey came slowly past and "spy hopped" me -- lifted his head out of the water to get a good look. Pretty eerie feeling that. Cheers, Andrew
Thanks guys for the comments. Ken -- I use a D7000 in a Sea & Sea housing with a Nikon 10-24 zoom generally set to 10mm and with a 2 or 3 stop hard split ND filter. It is necessary to have a large dome so that the sea water interface is not too large on the dome (larger dome is farther away from the lens so therefore the water line is relatively smaller) -- so I use a Zen 9in dome. Important to keep the dome underwater until just before shooting -- the water will sheet on the dome for a couple of seconds but then start to form droplets which will ruin your life. Also, glass domes work much better than acrylic domes for sheeting the water -- acrylic tends to go to droplets right away. And it is necessary to prefocus -- because the lens will focus on the water line on the dome and to stop it way down becuase there are different focus points in air and in water. So you really end up in a balancing act -- 3 stop ND on the topside, f10-f16 on the lens, 1/400 or so on the shutter and suddenly Iso has to be in the 1600 range to make it all work. Cheers, Andrew
10mm. You were damn close my friend. That takes nerve to get out of the cage. Do you pay extra for that or do they let you do it for free with rights on the images of you getting eaten. You've got this land and air shot technique perfected. Don
