Wedding Couple - Michael & Cheryl

I am fond of this image as it captures spontaneity and humour which is hard to portray with divers. It also proves that good wide angle images can be made at our local Sydney dive sites; one does not need clear tropical water if one has a wide enough lens! Now if you must know I swore I would never do wedding photography ever again after experiencing what it’s like doing just that a couple of times for friends. Give me sharks and sea snakes any day rather than a room full of inebriated wedding guests insisting on hamming it up for the camera. However, Cherie started a tradition years ago that a pre wedding dive day was essential when any of our dive club members decided to marry and I admit that this was one occasion when I was willing to make an exception and be the underwater wedding photographer!
This old motor bike is a feature artefact at Shelly Beach and made the perfect prop for the bridegroom to escort his bride away! I doubt many married couples would have a picture like this in their wedding album.

Photo Data: Location: Shelly Beach, Cabbage Tree Bay, Manly, NSW Australia. Genre: Extreme Wide Angle. Photography Data: Nikon D200, 10.5mm lens, Seacam Silver Housing, ISO 100, Manual Exposure Mode. Sunlight & Dual Strobe Exposure F8 @ 1/125sec. Image by Kevin Deacon.

Photo Hints: Use of an extreme wide angle lens with a field of view 180 degrees allows the photographer to shoot large subjects within a meter of the lens. Thus the 10 meter visibility at the dive site was more than enough to capture a good image. Very long strobe arms also reduce the possibility of backscatter from the particles that are in the water column. In situations like this my strobes are positioned about one meter away from the housing.

Interesting Facts: This motorcycle has been at Shelly beach for over 25 years. The bridegroom is a technical diver so this dive is probably the longest time he has spent at 7 meters other than decompressing!

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