How You Shot It: Fine Art Underwater Portrait – ‘Siren’ by Jesper Anhede

Alice Houstons

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How You Shot It is a series where you show us how you shot an image. Many who use our presets love to share their special processing recipes. You can join the SLR Lounge Textures and Presets group on Facebook and share your favorite images and recipes as well!

 Today’s post is from Jesper Anhede. You can follow him on Instagram and Facebook.

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Inspiration

I am working on a mythology and fairy tale series – below is a sample from Snow White and Tinkerbell. (Photo idea inspired from the extremely talented Russian photographer Tatiana Mikhina).

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How You Shot It

The setup is super basic. We borrowed a pool with a large glass wall on one side, put a black backdrop in the water and used only the natural light. My friend Cecilia (the model) is my photographic muse so I always harass her to try out new photo ideas. We basically just exhaled, descended in the water and taking shots like that over an over.

The Post Processing

BEFORE

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Adobe Lightroom with SLR Lounge Lightroom Presets 5.1, Adobe Photoshop (Oil Paint filter and Liquify) finally Color Efex Pro 4 (Tonal Contrast and Detail Extractor) Analog Efex Pro to put on the final light effects. (See the four images for the different steps).

BASE – 30a. Vivid – Import
CURVES – 23b. Neutral Punch – Apricot
ADJUST – 12a. Levels Boost – Light
ADJUST – 61a. Noise Reduction – ISO 400
Manual final touch

Gear List

AquaTech DC-5 V3 Sport Housing
Canon 5D Mark III
LP-DWZ port
Canon 24mm f1.4 lens.

AFTER

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Check Out the Behind the Scenes Video

Conclusion

This is a personal project I wanted to do just to see the result. I am planning to use the images for two purposes, to pitch a commercial gig and to make some kickass canvas for an exhibition.

About the “How to Shoot It” Series

This educational series highlights amazing images from our writers as well as our community. The goal is to not only feature inspirational work but to provide valuable education for our photography community. If you would like to submit your work, please click here for more info on writing for SLR Lounge.