Stunning Underwater Polaroid Nudes by Ian & Erick Regnard

Ian and Erick Regnard are two Australian brothers who have created a stunning series of underwater nudes. What makes the images even more remarkable is that they shot the series on large format 4x5 Polaroid film.  In 2010  one of their underwater Polaroid nudes won them International Photographer of the year in the "Special Category".  I think it was well deserved.  I especially love the images of the dancing stingrays with nude model - Simply stunning! Limited edition prints are available here.

© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard ~ The award winning image.


© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard

Photographer David Doubilet Swims With Huge Goliath Groupers

Scores of 600-pound Atlantic Goliath groupers leave their normally solitary existence to mate and spawn on the shipwrecks, ledges, and structures off of Jupiter, West Palm Beach, and Boynton Beach—as well as off the west coast of Florida—from mid-August into October. Photographer David Doubilet swam along with these friendly giants and captured some great images.


"They remind me of my family, like my Uncle Johnny from New Jersey." 
~ David Doubilet 

Goliath groupers emerge from a blizzard of baitfish on a WWII shipwreck off Florida. ~Photograph by David Doubilet

Photograph by David Doubilet
Goliaths do sometimes eat the big crustaceans, but they prefer to dine on sand-burrowing crabs.


Captain Tony Tarracino and his family pose in 1958 with a day’s catch from the Florida Keys. Recreational hauls of goliaths helped push them near extinction.


Goliaths hover in a 
strong current above
 the Zion Train artificial reef near Jupiter, Florida. The fish gather on wrecks and reefs by the tens or even hundreds in preparation for spawning. This behavior, which peaks during the new moons of August and September, makes them easy to catch.

Mind Blowing Macro Underwater Time-Lapse ~ by Daniel Stoupin

Daniel Stoupin snapped 150,000 22-megapixel RAW exposures to make this stunning 4K masterpiece. Sadly we can only view it in 1080P but it will still wow you I promise.



" To make this little clip I took 150000 shots. Why so many? Because macro photography involves shallow depth of field. To extend it, I used focus stacking. Each frame of the video is actually a stack that consists of 3-12 shots where in-focus areas are merged. Just the intro and last scene are regular real-time footage. One frame required about 10 minutes of processing time (raw conversion + stacking). Unfortunately, the success rate was very low due to copious technical challenges and I spent almost 9 long months just to learn how to make these kinds of videos and understand how to work with these delicate creatures." ~ Daniel Stoupin


*WATCH IN FULL HD ~ FULL SCREEN*

Slow Life from Daniel Stoupin on Vimeo.
Daniel's Gear:
- Canon 7D (died at the beginning of the project as he had overused it in his research), Canon 5d MkIII (90% of footage was done with it)
- Canon MP-E 65 mm lens
- adjustable custom-spectrum lamps (3 different models)
- several motorized stages including StackShot for focus stacking
- multiple computers to process thousands of 22MP raw images and perform focus stacking (an old laptop died on that mission after 3 weeks of continuous processing).
Edited in Sony Vegas, Adobe Photoshop CS6...

What is stack focusing you ask? Focus stacking (also known as focal plane merging and z-stacking) is a digital image processing technique which combines multiple images taken at different focus distances to give a resulting image with a greater depth of field (DOF) than any of the individual source images


Series of images demonstrating a 6 image focus bracket of A Tachinid fly. First two images illustrate typical DOF of a single image while the third image is the composite of 6 images.

Behind the Scenes: VOGUE Italia Photoshoot with Photographer Douglas Friedman

Hold Your Breath and Open Your Eyes – For its March issue, Vogue Italia features designer looks from eyewear producer Marchon. Photographer Douglas Friedman (Bernstein Andriulli) captures eyewear styles from labels such as Jil Sander, Emilio Pucci and Chloe paired with looks from their respective spring ready-to-wear collections.

Behind the Scenes with Photographer Martin Schoeller’s Cover Shoot with Swimmer Ryan Lochte

“He was very nice and very nice-looking, almost like a model,” Schoeller says. “But he is also obviously an incredible athlete—to watch him swim back and forth, turn at the edge and create those ripples in the pool made for a great photo.”

“I’m not even a big sports person, but athletes’ bodies are mesmerizing,” Schoeller says. “They’re constantly putting themselves in pose and doing something interesting with the physical expressions, and I love to photograph them because they’re natural performers at heart.”

Martin Schoeller is a New York City–based photographer.
 See more of his work here.

Behind the scenes video ( rather small unfortunately)

Underwater Shark Portrait Studio ~ with Photographer Michael Muller

Michael Muller is an award winning advertising and editorial photographer represented by top agency Stockland Martel. Recently he embarked on a shark portrait series in the deep blue waters of Beqa Lagoon, Fiji. ("The Mecca of Pacific Diving")  ...and brought studio lights with him! [via aphotoeditor]

Michael Muller: I was also so blessed to receive the 1400 [watt second] underwater strobe lights that I had been working on for four years from my fabricator the day before I left. I believe these are the strongest waterproof strobes that exist. (I currently have a patent pending on them.) Other than that, I prepared with a big smile for a trip of a lifetime.)

*click on images for a larger view*

"The lights were first tested in open ocean in the Galapagos and then further used many days in the pool with Michael Phelps and all the other olympic swimmers for the Speedo campaigns I shot. I have also used the lights for a multitude of other underwater shoots I have done. There isn’t a whole lot of testing that needs to be done since the lights are just a basic strobe head that happens to be waterproof. The main testing is what the light does underwater and how to control it with use of reflectors, grids, etc. Light reacts differently underwater than it does on land. It bounces and spreads out everywhere so it has taken many hours and days underwater with my team to get just where we are today and we still have so much to learn. That is what I love about “light” and photography, I have been doing it for 27 years almost daily and could do it until the day I die and still know just a fraction of what there is to know about light and the use of it, and how to control it."
"The minute you think you have got this thing called photography “down” is the day you should maybe put the camera down because your being very ignorant, light is something the greatest minds that have ever lived find mysterious and fascinating. Always be an explorer and try to learn something new with each shoot, never rest on your laurels thinking you’ve got it down! " ~ Michael Muller 







"...[Sharks] are like puppy dogs, and I know when you read that it’s hard to believe but it’s true.  They do NOT want us, we are NOT on their menu.  They are more scared of us then I believe we are of them.  They shy away from us at all times and only their curiosity similar to ours of them causes them to come in for a closer look." ~ Michael Muller 



Mike Muller on location in the Galapagos Islands




Here is a video of selected works from the exhibition "Opposing Instincts," a collaboration between celebrity photographer Michael Muller and artist Sage Vaughn. The comprises Muller's underwater photos of great white sharks, as painted on by Vaughn. "Opposing Instincts" opened at the Outsiders Gallery in London