Okinawa, for the Ocean lovers, is actually quite a small place. Snippets of information filter through chat groups and interest pages, where Manta Rays have been spotted, an errant Whaleshark, Turtles laying eggs, or indeed Turtle hatchlings making their dash to their liquid calling. Listen to the right whispers and from time to time magical adventures can happen. And thus it was of late. I'd heard of a sardine aggregation at a location favored by both snorkelers and SCUBA Divers alike. As I'd been looking also to turn my photographic attention to capturing aspects of a freediver I put that word out and was contacted by a young lady, Susie, who had recently returned to Okinawa and was, and is, at heart, an Ocean spirit. We struck up an agreement for images in return for some modeling and hit the road.

As the saying goes, the rest is history. Below is a short three minute edit of some of the sequences captured on a GoPro Hero12 Black using the AOi wide-angle adapter lens.

As with all of my shoots with split water I was using the Laowa 12mm f2.8 Zero Distortion lens. This is a fully manual lens with no diaphragm so the image in the viewfinder shifts in brightness depending on the selected aperture, ISO, or shutter speed. Pretty wild to get used to that but it can also serve as a very rough ballpark tool for exposure calculations etc. My only gripe with this particular setup using the Aquatech Imaging Solutions Reflex housing for my Canon EOS 5DSr is that there is no manual aperture control. I cannot change aperture through the menu as it requires physical manipulation to set it correctly. Now, seeing as the day was relatively sunny and taking refraction into account I set the aperture to f16 as is standard with most, if not all, of my split water shoots to date. This allows any protruding elements such as limbs, fins or structures to align correctly as they pass through the surface of the water.

Man it was dark under that pier? I was locked in at f16, so a really small aperture. Even by pumping the ISO up to 3200 I couldn't really shoot pointing in any other direction other than from underneath the pier struts towards the open water and most lighted areas. I could have accepted the grain/noise associated with shooting at ISO3200 but I didn't want to push it too much. As it was I feel I gave Topaz DeNoise a good workout on the resulting images. I guess I could have shot at f11 but in hindsight it was my oversight on the site appreciation prior to jumping into the wet stuff, which at that point would have been a no-go on opening the housing to adjust the lens setting.

At the end of the day I'm relatively happy with the shots we got, it was my first real time shooting with a freediving model so there is that to be happy about. Alas, us photographers are our own worse critics so I would like to head back there, maybe with the family this coming weekend, and check it out once again. I'm sure the place will be crowded at best though. Watch this space.

Some of the Images Accomplished