Up early because I wanted to be sure to get my morning stuff out of the way and have plenty of time to review camera technicalities before heading into my first bona-fide paying job as a DSD photographer. Manuals and notes reviewed, triple checked to make sure I had everything I needed to complete my task. My Queen left a half or so before me for her new job every Wednesday prepping food for Blues Backyard BBQ – I bid her farewell and then loaded up the truck for my gig. I wanted to get new batteries for my flash, as I used up most of my batteries experimenting last night and wanted to start the dive off with a new set. That turned into cluste…. calamity, but I finally got me new batteries and the flash was working properly. I took a couple of obligatory shots of prepping for the dive and we moved into the water. All the photo shoots I did during the Dive Master/Instructor training gave me a really good insight to what/when/how I needed to be for this and in came in very handy~! As the dive moved away from the shallow clear water we were in, to the deeper, bluer water, with cloud cover and shadows – I knew I needed to start using my flash. Engage flash….. flash not working….. dammit Emmit~! Fiddle with this, flash still not working….. dammit… fiddle with that….. flash still not working…… DAMMIT~! STOP…. regroup…. think through the process I did the night before….. flash is working~!! YAY~!! Flash is to bright…. easy fix – -flash not bright enough…. dammit – easy fix. Gots to tell you…… there are SOOOO many more things to contend with when you’re using that kind of equipment….. wow. The dive continued whether I was ready or not – so I scrambled to keep up and analyze my issues with the flash….. but it was working and before I knew it – I was changing sub-modes on the camera and adjusting flash intensity for clouds and shadows…. all the while keeping up with my two eager new divers while they followed the Dive Master. By the end of the dive, I was adjusting flash angles, intensities and sub-modes like I knew what I was doing. I dang near felt like Jacque Cousteau there for a hot minute.
With the dive finally over – I headed out to the solitude of the house to rinse my gear, get a quick shower and start loading pictures. My heart about bust out of my chest when I saw the preview panel – because in that one glance – I knew ‘I got it’. It’s funny… looking at the preview panel of pictures, you can see exactly where I got the flash started and then figured it out — the pictures just got better from there, and the last dozen and a half pictures or so, needed hardly any editing what-so-ever. Feeling pretty proud of myself, I delivered the flash drive to the customer and came back to the house to revel in my own satisfaction of a job well done. I put some of the pictures up on the dive shops FB page and have been getting a lot of good comments and likes on the pictures. Having no where to go now but getting better – I hope to start booking a LOT more gigs like this one~! I hope you like these pictures ½ as much as I do……….
Good Night Ya’ll * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Thankx for stopping in~!
