Description

I’m not the biggest fan of black water photography, mostly my prejudice stems from it’s overuse in underwater photography, I really enjoy getting colorful or interesting backgrounds in my shots, but I also can’t deny that black water backgrounds have there place in our world. Whip Coral Commensal Shrimp are great ways to practice black water backgrounds, if you can face the subject with the ocean in the background you can do black water shots without the use of strobes. If you have strobes you can Google how to do it.

I make shots like this by positioning so the ocean is my background, dropping my shutter speed and positioning my light in a way that causes the light to drop off quickly once it passes the subject, sometimes I get a very dark blue background and the slightest tweak in Photoshop will correct that for me. If you think people don’t use Photoshop in this industry you’d be mistaken.

This was also a great find because there are actually two Shrimps in this shot, notice the little baby one to the left of the big one. I don’t know enough about Commensal Whip Coral Shrimps to claim that it is a juvenile, it could be a smaller mate, or just another smaller Commensal Shrimp, but I’d like to think they are a happy little Commensal Shrimp Family.