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Blue Duck Photography Partners with RAID

Blue Duck Photography and RAID are pleased to announce their partnership for a new underwater photography course. It will be available to all who are interested in underwater photography; with everything from the important features to consider when thinking about buying an underwater camera to using it effectively alongside all the important accessories now available. Plus how to integrate camera and skills learnt out of the water with the correct emphasis on diving and environmental awareness.

Digital photography is advancing at a rapid pace, with more divers than ever before keen to record their aquatic adventures. So Blue Duck Photography needed a dive agency partner that placed emphasis on high quality in water skills from the outset. Great trim, buoyancy control and safety protocols were what highlighted RAID as the agency they wanted to hook up with. Looking around they found that there was a dearth of up to date information on how a budding underwater photographer could easily learn the underwater photo skillset in a safe and productive manner.

The course will initially be structured in a two part format. Part one will concentrate on starting out looking at the kit you need, plus the features and accessories that are important. It will then progress through shooting in available light, starting with automatic and program modes, and then on to shooting using fully manual controls. Understanding the light we have, the direction it’s coming from and how much of it there is available, is the cornerstone of all photography; so it’s vital that you get a good foundation in this to start off with. This will follow on to shooting using artificial light, as a way to enhance colours and illuminate your shots. Finally how to successfully mix both available and artificial light.

The ultimate goal is to get the sort of shots that you want rather than what the camera dictates. Once you’re armed with this fundamental skillset, we’ll look at the different types of underwater photography, from shooting reefscapes, coral gardens and stately wrecks using wide angle lenses, all the way down to shooting the smaller creatures, and on to the really teeny stuff like nudibranchs and weird crustaceans with add-on macro lenses. This will be underpinned at all times with environmental awareness and safety to the fore. We’ll even help you with guidance on how to find the marine life, and then finish off with a primer on digital photo editing to finesse your pictures for the web or to proudly put up on your wall.

Blue Duck Photography are Phil and Anne Medcalf in partnership with Paul ‘Duxy’ Duxfield. Phil and Anne are drawing upon their skills gained as keen underwater photographers active on the competition scene, alongside their professional lives as nurses and nurse trainers.

Duxy has been around in the world of underwater photography for 15 yrs working as a sales manager for the two of the biggest underwater photography retailers, and then onto leading trips and workshops all over the world, and is a regular contributor for dive magazines as a photo journalist. Together they realised that there was a gap badly needing to be filled in the correct tuition and advice given to new underwater photographers.

Alongside the tuition and training, Blue Duck Photography give talks to dive clubs the length and breadth of the country, and provide a bespoke retail service only selling equipment that they know and use themselves, utilising their mantra of ‘best advice’.

“RAID invites the best possible authors and co-authors to write and help write our training materials, whether its Jill Heinerth and Steve Lewis for our Cave courses or Paul Haynes for our Rebreather Core Knowledge manual we’re proud to have their expertise within our training platform. Paul (Duxy) and I have known and worked with each other two decades, that allows me to say, I’m excited by what this collaboration with the Blue Ducks team will bring to the industry. Their passion, knowledge and experience is the perfect fit for RAID and subsequently, all divers interested globally in starting or being better at underwater photography.”

James Rogers, Director, RAID UK & Malta

The online course will be available before the Summer to anyone, and then Part II which will cover in water skills and assessment by a RAID instructor will follow soon after.

Contact Blue Duck Photography via email at info@blueduckphoto.com to express your early interest.

James Rogers
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