My First Underwater Videos
I started my YouTube channel 8 years ago. I’ve had fun with it since, especially in the last 2 years since my triggerfish video took off and I got myself more of an audience for my videos:
I started it because I had shot a few videos with a cheap action-cam which I had bought at Abyss Scuba Diving, the great dive shop in Sydney where I also did my instructor training. It was just something I wanted to give a shot, after spending several years making an ambitious effort in underwater still photography, and I didn’t even want to invest into a high-end GoPro yet (I shoot with a GoPro HERO7 now, among other tools).
I took this action camera – by now long gone the way of all electronics trash – onto some dives, and when marine animals moved in an interesting way, which can’t be captured too well with stills, I filmed. Right away I tried to edit my videos nicely.
How do these videos hold up now?
Sharks in Sydney
One of the top attractions of diving in Sydney are all the sharks which still swim about in the ocean. Especially the grey nurse sharks are quite a cool sight. They are much less shy than tropical sharks, and come close to divers. My mate Paul Winn contributed the music for the video. I still like it a lot, even though the video quality is not what I produce now, both a function of older, cheaper technology and probably lesser skills of mine.
Sardines
When I visited Moalboal on Cebu in the Philippines, of course I filmed the famous schooling sardines over there. I immediately had the thought that Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet would make great music to go with the footage.
The light conditions below the sardines are sometimes not ideal, so I edited the video to be black and white. Good thinking by the novice video editor me!
Gobies and Shrimps
I shot this video when I spent a few weeks in Palawan after my brief stint at a dive shop with a less-than-ideal work environment (to put it politely). I shot this mostly with my Canon 5DII in a Hugyfot housing, with ambient light, on breath hold. I mostly placed the camera in front of goby burrows and waited for the shy fishes to come back out. Actually the results are quite nice, though these days I am able to get the same amount of footage much quicker.
I hope you enjoyed these,
Best Fishes,
Klaus
