Underwater Photography Guide

🏆 Ocean Art 2025: Honorable Mention Cold Water

🦭 “Sea Lion Mayhem” by Allison Vitsky Sallmon

📍Santa Barbara Island, California, USA

✍️ The story behind the shot:
California sea lion rookeries during pupping season are similar to an unchaperoned party of preschoolers. On this very early morning dive, I did my best to steady myself next to a shallow, kelp-covered rock while a mass of sea lion pups bombarded me enthusiastically from all angles. One pup in particular was quite a showoff, demonstrating his advanced sea lion skills such as blowing bubbles, inspecting my port, and biting on kelp strands.

📸 Camera: Canon 5DMkIV
🔎 Lens: Canon 8-15mm fisheye @ 15mm
🏠 Housing: Sea and Sea
💡 Strobe/light: 2x Sea and Sea YSD3 strobes

📷 Camera Settings:
Aperture: f/9
Shutter Speed: 1/200s
ISO: 640

🏆 Ocean Art 2025: Honorable Mention Underwater Digital Art

👁️ “Look” by Julio Martínez

📍Portman, Murcia, Spain

✍️ The story behind the shot:
This is a seahorse (Hippocampus guttulatus) that I was able to follow for months and plan the photograph. I used a red light to illuminate the scene from the side and with the use of the snoot I illuminated softly only the seahorse’s eye to obtain its natural yellow colour. I completed the composition with a double exposure in camera to frame the protagonist using a special effects prismatic lens Halo filter.
In the image processing I replaced and adjusted the colour of the scene until I achieved that purple-violet colour while maintaining the original lighting of the snoot on the eye.

📸 Camera: Olympus OMD em1 mkii
🔎 Lens: Olympus 60mm
🏠 Housing: Isotta
💡 Strobe/light: Backscatter MF2 with snoot

📷 Camera Settings:
Aperture: f/14
Shutter Speed: 1/320s
ISO: 640