Category: Photo Guru: Marty Snyderman

An inductee into DEMA’s Scuba Diving Hall of Fame, Marty Snyderman is a proud recipient of DEMA’s 2008 Reaching Out Award. Marty is an EMMY Award winning cinematographer, still photographer, author, and speaker specializing in the marine environment. As the Marine Life Editor of Dive Training magazine, Marty produces at least three columns in every issue, including the underwater photography column entitled “Behind The Lens” and a natural history column entitled “What’s That?” www.MartySnyderman.com

Fill A Pleasing Percentage Of Your Frame

One of the pitfalls for underwater photographers, especially newer shooters, is failing to have their subject fill a pleasing percentage of their photographic frame. All too often, the result is a fantastic subject that is too small in an image. In short, the best way to describe a picture like that is “an opportunity lost”.

Create Good Pre-Dive Habits To Help Make Great Photographs

Hi Vivid-Pixers, In all of my previous blogs I have written about techniques involving things you want to consider or do during a dive. This blog is a bit different in that I will be discussing some things that you will want to do before your dives as you prepare and assemble your camera system.

Photographing Dolphins

Hi Vivid-Pixers! I think it fair to say that dolphins have a special place in the hearts and minds of a lot of divers. We admire their aquatic skills, obvious intelligence, and social nature. And we appreciate the fact that dolphins just have a way of lifting our spirits and bringing out the best in

Muck Diving

Muck diving. The term hardly sounds appealing, but in many popular diving destinations muck diving is the rage. As the name suggests, muck diving involves diving in areas where the sea floor is mud, clay or sand, preferably black sand in an area near where a freshwater river empties into the sea. Thus, muck diving

Let There Be Light!

Here’s A Question For You Let’s assume you want to create an image that has a strobe-lit, colorful foreground subject and properly exposed water in the background. If you are diving in rather dark, greenish water as you might be in New England, California, Oregon and Washington etc., would you want your strobe to emit

One Strobe Or Two? What’s Right For You, And Why

In almost every underwater photography class I teach, when the subject is lighting and strobes students are quick to ask a question regarding how many strobes they should use. My answer usually comes in the form of a question, or several questions. That’s the way I teach. I want students to think about the potential

Have Underwater Camera. Will Photograph Fish.

Hi Vivid-Pixers! “Have underwater camera. Will photograph fish”. I think this mantra applies to just about every underwater photographer in the world. After all, colorful fishes are one of the underwater world’s feature attractions, and for photographers many species are simply irresistible. But despite all of the things that fishes have going for them- color,

Making Photographs

Hi Vivid-Pixers! If you watch new underwater photographers as I have over the years, you would surely see that a significant percentage of them that try to take pictures of dozens of subjects on almost every dive. I often explain their style as “shooting at anything with gills”. I get it. For a

Fill A Pleasing Percentage Of Your Frame

One of the pitfalls for underwater photographers, especially newer shooters, is failing to have their subject fill a pleasing percentage of their photographic frame. All too often, the result is a fantastic subject that is too small in an image. In short, the best way to describe a picture like that is “an opportunity lost”.