In praise of simplicity

In the technological bulimia that marks digital camera production one risks to miss the whole point of photography, regarding both techniques and contents. After all, taking pictures boils down to very few fundamentals: a) a lens with a diaphragm, b) a shutter for exposure timing, c) a sensor receiving an image with features depending on a and b, d) a flash or a lamp, when required, or anything thet can give light when there isn’t enough. Yes, light, because it’s light that produces pictures. Light, and the photographer’s eye, pushing a button is not enough. There is a thing called viewfinder, or display, allowing us to frame the subject and to choose how to represent it, because we should not forget that any image is a subjective representation of reality, filtered by a technical medium.

Underwater photography

The above premise is even more valid for u/w photography, where the limits imposed by technology, but mostly by external conditions, further reduce the photographer’s field of action and the adherence of the representation to the reality we see with our eyes. But there are differences to u/w photo. Being underwater is not enough: there is little difference between the everyday souvenir pictures we all take on land, and the ones we take

with a housing during a splash, or the ones of our posing diving friends, possibly without the mouthpieces for better pose!! To me u/w photography is something more complex than that, like a way to represent the submerged landscape, and the organisms that concur to creating it, as adherently as possible to what yoy see through the mask, and capable of rendering the feelings you experience underwater, the extraordinary biodiversity, the amazement produced by shapes and colors so different from land.

When technology can’t make it

 Ok, for all this we need technology, but what really counts is the photographer’s ability tu use the technology to achieve what he wants. What’s needed, excuse me for insisting, is in the first place the possibility of shooting blue pictures (from 7-8 meters down) allowing to read the shadows without a white (overexposed) water surface; and if you can shoot good blue pictures you’re not too far from getting good pictures mixing ambient and artificial lighting.

Well, with point-and-shoot compacts this is a desperate undertaking, and no SCENE mode can solve the problem. The reason is simple: the brightness difference between the surface in front of the camera and the background (especially if it is dark rocks) is so high that the automatic exposure cannot average the two values and tends to expose either for highlights or for shadows. The result is  images with either a visible background and overexposed foreground, or vice versa. The problem gets even more awkward when you try to use the strobe, because, as the subject is now dark, the camera automatically exposes for shadows and therefore it

Using technology

It’s not by chance, then, that all serious photographers, even when they use super-sophisticated cameras like the last generation reflexes,  underwater they use manual controls for speed, aperture, and ISO. They choose, they won’t let the machine take over, and they choose not only what to shoot, but also how to shoot. Because there is nothing simpler than diving, finding an interesting subject, evaluating ambient light (using the camera technology, i.e., the light meter), setting ISO, shutter time, and aperture, and then shooting. And if conditions stay the same, you do this once and for all, and then it becomes like working in full automation. It’s so simple that on a Mediterranean seabed, at about 20 meters, you can easily foresee that 100 ISO 1/60 f8 will do the job, whereas on a coral reef 1/60 f11 will be ok as well. Of course, if you don’t know, or don’t understand the meaning of 100 ISO 1/60 f8, you better spend a few minutes of your time to find out. But don’t make the mistake of believing that this is difficult. It is simple, differently from cameras, often too complicated, trying do do simple things with little success.