Here is another shot taken at Kurt Amsler’s his underwater photo workshop in St. Cyr-sur-Mer in the south of France.

The photo is a fisheye at about 12m depth. We tested a specific flash position with both flash units as far as possible vertically above the lens. However, when I checked the image on the camera monitor, the yellow polyps (Zoanthidea) didn’t ‘pop’ enough for me.

Reason was fairly simple: The two flashes high above the lens caused significant shadows at the drop-off wall, rendering the bright yellow area into a mix of yellow spots and darker areas.

Hence I reconfigured the two flashes within a few seconds. The left one was positioned horizontally to get light onto the diver, the right one was kept vertically above the lens, but I pulled it closer to the lens – about 40cm above the lens. This helped to reduce the shadows significantly and made the polyps ‘pop’ in this wonderful bright yellow.