Atlantic Spotted Dolphin 09

This is another one of my favorite images from July when I spent 6 days onboard the Dolphin Dream photographing Atlantic spotted dolphins in the Bahamas. The trip exceeded my expectations and I was incredibly fortunate to have so many wonderful encounters with the dolphins. I’m sure that all of my non-underwater photography friends can appreciate the beauty of this image, but I cannot state emphatically enough how hard it is to create an underwater image like this. Swimming as hard as I can, I am usually totally out of breath by the time I am in the right spot. Before I can dive beneath the surface to take a picture, I have to grab one last breath of air. Once I am underwater, I then hope that a dolphin swims close enough to me to photograph with my wide-angle lens. Most of the time, the image doesn’t happen, but in this case everything came together. I like this image because of the dolphins reflection on the surface. I used my Canon 5dmkII and 17-40mm f4 lens with a +3 diopter in my Ikelite 5DmkII housing with 8″ dome port. This image required a bit of processing to remove the cyan cast of the water using Aperture 3.0 and Photoshop CS5.