Octopus

Subject

Octopus

Location

Kerama Islands, Okinawa, Japan

Equipment

Canon Camera with Inon Dual Strobes

Dive

15 meters (49 feet at depth) during a day dive

Octopus can be hit or miss.  Sometimes you see one and they want nothing to do with you.  And sometimes they are around for one or two shots and they are gone.  But then you have those brief moments where they want to stay with you for the whole dive.  This was the case for this curious octopus.  He really enjoyed the camera and the company of divers.  He was with our diving party for almost 45 minutes.  He would follow us around and pose for the camera.  At the time I didn’t realize how rare that was but after logging hundreds of hours underwater, you begin to appreciate moments like this a little more.  The octopus spend the majority of his time moving around the bottom so it wasn’t until I was with him for 35 minutes, I saw my opportunity to shoot this image where I was well below him.  I was able to expose the water behind him to create depth.  The bright blue with the color contrasts of the octopus brought out his colors.  With his eyes and body turned towards me you can see the whole octopus.  He was not shy to show himself and you could tell he was confident.   I had to open the aperture on the camera to all more light in so the image would not be too dark.  This also helped the background open up.  Having two strobes on the octopus helped keep the light balanced on both sides to make a strong portrait.  The octopus took this position for what seemed several minutes.  In reality it was probably 30 seconds.  Time and space always seem to slow down when you care capturing moments. 

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