The transition from landscape photography to underwater photography brings forth many challenges and difficulties. One of them is color loss. When light is transmitted from air to water, water acts as a filter and absorbs large amount of light passing through it. Hence, it is said that color loss is tied to absorption. Water absorbs light wavelengths of all energies starting with red, orange, yellow and so on. These are absorbed before blue and green. Hence, many underwater photos appear bluish green.
The deeper one goes, the more light is absorbed. Red color gets lost at 15 feet followed by orange at 25 feet, then yellow at 40 feet and then green at around 75 feet.
This is a very tricky issue and hence one has to compensate for the color loss.
The amount of light that penetrates in the water depends upon the weather conditions and the time of day. The amount of light available for the photographers depends upon the position of sun, as well. Hence one can compensate for the color loss by clicking photos between 10 am to 2 pm. This is the time when sun is directly overhead and water reflects least amount of sun rays.
A calm surface allows good passage of light than rough one. Hence, the water clarity plays an important role in color loss. As mentioned earlier, the deeper one goes, the more light is absorbed. Hence, one must stay shallower to click best photographs. Similarly, one must try to remain as close as possible to the subject. This will reduce the travel of light and hence will help you to gain maximum color.
Color loss can be irritating at some times, when one does not get a real feel of the photographed subject. Hence, to add color to the subject, a color correcting filter is used. There are underwater filters available in red gradients and help to restore red spectrum at different levels underwater. But, before using one must see if the filter is blocking the available light to the lens. Using a strobe is another way of adding color to the underwater photographs. Strobe provides clear illumination to the subject as well as proper coloration. Setting white balance to low light can give improved results as well.
