Description

It is always a beautiful day when you find Sea Horse while diving, they are such weird little underwater specimens that you can’t help but sit and stare, occasionally I remember to take photographs of them. Sygnathiformes are notoriously hard critters to take quality photos of, they have a habit of turning away from lights, strobes and divers, so all you get is their back, I have a strong feeling even the noise from our regulators disturbs them.

So when photographing Sea Horse’s you need to breathe quite, and only light them up at the last possible second. My usual behavior when I find them is to look for something similar, so if it is in a sea fan, do all my aperture and lighting settings well away from the subject, set everything up before I go in for the shot and only light them in the instant I’m pulling the trigger on the photo. This tends to be the only sure fire way with Synathiformes to not disturb them and force them deeper into their immediate environment, they like to hide when the lights come out.