Articles

An orange globe of sun crests over the horizon. Standing in waist-deep water, my large Sea & Sea YS-250 strobes dangle just beneath the surface. It’s choppy out here at Stingray Sandbar this morning, but despite the rough water, I’ve opted to do split shots anyway. For an instant, it all comes together with the sun, the water and a single stingray. I click the shutter at the same moment a wave splashes onto my dome port.  

The wave has spread the sunlight in my image, creating a fiery glow in the top portion of my photograph. Hurrah! But the best was yet to come, as a few months later this captured moment earned a place as the National Geographic Photo of the Day. Definitely a career highlight.
 

Stingray City: From Tourist Trap to Art Studio

I always look for the art in my photography. I started as a photojournalist, where my news photographs were often noted for their artistic vibe. When I transitioned into underwater photography, I maintained that goal by always seeking the more interesting angle and the unseen scene. Sometimes you need to throw the conventional rules out of the window.

Stingray Sandbar in Grand Cayman is a perfect place for those seeking to make art. Sure, it can be crowded with tourists screaming as a stingray rubs up against them. But it’s also a great place to experiment: As I tell my photography students, there are infinite ways to shoot the same subject. The variables are so many: lens choice, angle, time of day, water conditions, light, light, and light. Stingray Sandbar is a perfect place to put this “infinite ways of shooting” into practice. Here, I demonstrate this by sharing the methods behind my favorite images from this magical location.
 

Settings: f/8, 1/125s, ISO 100

“Not A Swimming Pool”: Shooting in the middle of the day, I placed my dome port just below the surface and angled slightly up. This enabled me to capture the reflection of the stingray as it cruised under marbled water.  
 

Settings: f/6.3, 1/320s, ISO 100

“Flight School”: Stingrays at the Sandbar, when left to their own devices, will school (technically known as a “fever”). Knowing this, I spun around in circles, following them as they glided through the water under puffy clouds.  
 

Settings: f/6.3, 1/800s, ISO 100

“Dream Of The Stingray”: What would happen if I shot with a slow shutter speed, but still panned as a stingray swam past? The result is a dreamy, overexposed image, the stingray dragging streams of color behind it.  
 

Settings: f/22, 1/10s, ISO 100

“Amazing Morning At Stingray Sandbar”: During another sunrise, I am pleased to find the water completely flat, allowing me to photograph countless over-under images as the rays circle around me. Upon reviewing this image at home, I find that the green-blue water below the surface doesn’t add much to the scene. However, the absence of color—a mere black-and-white conversion with a graduated filter—makes the stingray stand out as the first thing your eye is drawn to. I leave the eye of the ray its shimmery yellow. The viewer is now drawn to the stingray’s eye.  
 

Settings: f/8, 1/125s, ISO 200

“Surfing Stingray”: Remember that rough water sunrise? Well, a trip to the Sandbar the afternoon prior had breaking waves. I grew up body-surfing in Rhode Island, so far from being daunted by the crashing movement, I embraced it, camera in hand, strobes off, riding waves and looking for stingrays as I did so. I came upon this one, and ducked beneath a wave as the ray swam toward me.
 

Settings: f/16, 1/80s, ISO 200

“Phalanx”: Happy to have discovered a group of stingrays schooling, I kept an eye on their movements until I found these four patrolling. I converted this to black and white, bumped up the contrast, and—the icing on the cake—used a blue filter to isolate the wavy sunlight.
 

Settings: f/11, 1/100s, ISO 100
 

Pushing the Limits

The possibilities are endless. The joy in experimenting with a familiar subject is punching holes in convention. Ask yourself, “How would I shoot this subject?” Then, do it differently: Change the shutter speed, swim into the waves, look for the reflections. Pardon the pun, but photographically at Stingray City, I’ve only just scratched the surface.  
 

Settings: f/11, 1/200s, ISO 320