My first love, photography, has now been equalled with another; scuba diving (that's why I'm not around DPC much these days!). Here's what is certainly my best ever diving experience to date & probably my favourite underwater photo.
Our second dive of the day at Table Thila, North Ari Atoll, Maldives, searching for mantas (none stopped by on the first) and after quite a wait, along came 7 of them, gliding right past and over us like alien spacecraft.
Taken with my very modest compact, I was glad just to be able to capture the event at the time !
Statistics
Place: 381 out of 1129 Avg (all users): 5.8254 Avg (commenters): 6.8070 Avg (participants): 5.7995 Avg (non-participants): 5.9625 Views since voting: 1372 Views during voting: 706 Votes: 504 Comments: 67 Favorites: 5 (view)
Thanks very much everyone for all the comments; much appreciated, some very lovely ones which gave me far more joy than my final score...
I had hoped this shot would do better than it did but the 5.7/5.8 seemed to stick so I guessed it wouldn't be top 10 ! Would like to know why so many 3's & 4's... perhaps you all thought it was a snap through an aquarium glass or something. Well, as these chaps were 5 metres across, it would have been one hell of an aquarium ! And to the commenter who said the sand was a little featureless, well I'm sorry, but when you've sat on the sea bed for best part of an hour waiting for these guys to appear, there's not an awful lot you can do about that...
Difficult with so many images to judge, but still disappointing to see some rather more 'ordinary' pics rated higher. Ah well, such is DPC !
I'm hoping to leave comments on as many photo's in this challenge as possible... out of (currently) 1115 images, I gave 93 of them an 8. Your image was one of those 93, placing you well within the top 10% for this challenge.
Underwater pics are hard to pull off, in fact there are a few in this challenge that don't manage it. The title and content really work for this shot however as it really does look like the manta are flying.
Wonderful capture--a little flat though. I'd brighten the highlights and darken the darks to give it a little more pop. (I pulled it into photoshop and noticed you wouldn't lose detail doing this.)
I LOVE mantas. These look like they are flying in the air. Incredibly clear ocean, their wing positions are wonderful, and the black specs of the fish add interest. The sand is a little featureless.
It almost does look as if the mantas are gliding over land instead of in the water! Brilliant shot, so many of this type are kept in colour but I really like the b&w. Nice focus too.
the only problem with taking underwater (or through the glass) shots is that it is hard to not loose the colors and tones...for the most part they seem to always be "murky"
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