Underwater photography constantly challenges us to innovate, especially when we seek to capture elusive or fast-moving subjects. One such innovation is the technique known as “shooting blind.” While not necessarily a brand-new concept, shooting blind is an effective and creative approach that many underwater photographers may not have fully explored. It enables you to capture moments that traditional methods often miss—such as speeding sea lions or swirling bait balls. Though this method may already exist in some forms, I’ve not seen it widely documented, which is why I’m excited to share it in depth.
During a recent underwater photography workshop in La Paz, conducted through Bluewater Photo, I introduced this technique to several students. The results were immediate and impressive. Students found themselves capturing dynamic, well-composed shots of subjects that would have been challenging, if not impossible, to photograph with standard techniques. With such success, it became clear that this concept deserved a broader audience.
Understanding the Shooting Blind Technique
At its core, shooting blind involves taking photos without looking through your camera's viewfinder or LCD screen. If you're using a DSLR with a fisheye or wide-angle lens, the process begins by extending your arms and pushing your rig out toward the subject. Tilt the rig slightly upward, point in the direction of your subject, and fire the shutter. Rather than meticulously composing each shot through the viewfinder, you rely on muscle memory, intuition, and the ultra-wide framing of your lens to do the work. Often, I’ll fire off several shots at slightly different angles to increase the chances of a well-composed image.
This technique offers two significant advantages. First, it allows you to get physically closer to subjects like sharks, sea lions, or large schools of fish. Many marine animals are less intimidated by a camera rig extended from your body than they are by a diver moving in close. Second, shooting blind provides a better upward angle than is usually possible when keeping your face pressed to the viewfinder. That higher angle is often critical for creating compelling underwater images, especially when capturing scenes with the sun in the background or the silhouette of marine life against the surface.
Practice Makes Proficient
While the idea is simple, executing the shooting blind technique effectively requires practice. Initially, your compositions may be hit or miss. But as with any skill, repetition builds accuracy. With enough practice, you begin to intuit how to position the camera, how to angle it for best lighting, and how to frame the subject. One of the most exciting aspects of this method is that even your “misses” often result in creative, unexpected compositions—sometimes better than what you had originally intended. It is this unpredictable, experimental quality that makes the technique not just useful but artistically exciting.
Another important aspect is trust—in your gear, your skills, and your sense of spatial awareness. Because you are not using your eyes to guide the composition, you must rely more heavily on your understanding of how your camera behaves underwater. This includes knowing your lens’s angle of view, your strobe’s coverage, and the distance-to-subject dynamics.
Case Studies and Examples from the Field
In La Paz, I was able to capture a range of compelling images using the shooting blind technique. One of the most memorable was a series of images taken of a giant bait ball swirling in shallow water. By extending the rig beneath the school of fish and angling it slightly upwards, I was able to incorporate the sunburst and surrounding water column into the frame—something that would have been awkward or even impossible with conventional shooting posture.
Another standout example was a wide shot of my dive buddy surrounded by thousands of fish. The upward angle, combined with the distance from my body to the camera, created a dramatic image that felt immersive and three-dimensional. These kinds of images—where the subject is fully engulfed in marine life and light—require a perspective that often cannot be achieved while looking through the viewfinder.
I also took a few selfies using this method, inserting myself into the chaos of the bait ball. While unconventional, these images were fun and revealed how versatile and creative the technique can be. Whether you're aiming for storytelling shots or abstract compositions, shooting blind offers surprising flexibility.
Mastering the Technical Setup for Shooting Blind
To fully unlock the potential of the shooting blind technique, understanding and refining your technical setup is critical. This includes everything from your camera settings to your lens selection and how you configure your strobes. While shooting blind is partially instinctual and relies on intuition, it also benefits greatly from premeditated, technically sound setup choices that increase your margin of error and maximize your chances of success.
Start by choosing the right lens. Ultra-wide lenses, such as fisheyes or rectilinear wide-angles, are ideal because they allow you to capture more of the scene even if your framing is not perfect. These lenses are forgiving, enabling you to include subjects that are slightly off-center or at unexpected angles. The wider your field of view, the more you can afford to “miss” your exact framing and still come out with a usable photo.
Next, consider your camera’s autofocus settings. Continuous autofocus (AI Servo for Canon or AF-C for Nikon and others) allows your camera to track moving subjects, which is particularly helpful when photographing fast marine life. Set your camera to a high burst mode to increase the number of frames per second, giving you more chances to capture the perfect moment. Additionally, using a smaller aperture, such as f/8 or f/11, extends your depth of field, ensuring that more elements in your frame are in focus even if your subject is not exactly where you thought it was.
Pre-setting your focus can also be an effective strategy. If you know the general distance at which your subject is likely to appear, you can set your focus manually or use back-button focus to lock it, reducing the time the camera spends hunting for focus during shooting.
Strobe Placement and Lighting Considerations
Lighting remains one of the most important elements of successful underwater photography, and shooting blind does not change this reality. However, the lighting challenges and opportunities are different when you’re not composing through the viewfinder. Because you can’t see how shadows fall or how well the subject is illuminated in real time, strobe positioning must be strategic and somewhat generalized.
In most cases, it’s best to keep your strobes angled slightly outward in a classic wide-angle position, rather than pointing directly at the subject. This avoids hot spots and helps create more even lighting across the frame. When pushing your rig forward or upward, ensure that your strobes remain within a symmetrical configuration, either parallel or forming a gentle V-shape. Avoid extreme inward angles unless you’re shooting close-focus wide-angle, as they can cause harsh lighting and unwanted backscatter.
Depending on visibility and water conditions, you might want to adjust the power of your strobes beforehand to avoid overexposure. In murky water, lower power and tighter positioning can reduce scatter. In clearer conditions, higher power can help compensate for greater distances between your subject and strobes, especially when shooting sunbursts or larger scenes.
A useful trick is to preset your strobes at a middle power level and then bracket your exposures by taking multiple images while adjusting the strobe output incrementally. Though you cannot adjust the lighting mid-shot during shooting blind, you can cycle through exposure variations with each attempt, increasing your chances of nailing a well-lit frame.
Improving Composition Without the Viewfinder
When shooting blind, composition becomes both more challenging and more creative. Since you're not looking through the viewfinder, you lose your visual feedback loop and must rely on instinct, prior experience, and an understanding of your lens’s field of view. While this may seem like a limitation, it can lead to spontaneous compositions that feel natural, bold, and fresh.
One technique to improve composition is to use your body position and movement deliberately. Rather than just pointing the camera at the subject, think about how your orientation and buoyancy affect the angle and framing of the image. If you want a shot that includes the surface and sun rays, descend a bit and shoot upward. For reef scenes or subjects on the bottom, stay neutral and angle slightly downward. Making these adjustments before extending your rig can drastically change the final image.
Another trick is to use repetitive motion. As your subject moves—whether it’s a sea lion darting around or a baitball in flux—you can follow its general motion with your camera and take a series of rapid shots, varying your angle slightly each time. This technique helps you capture a dynamic range of compositions from a single encounter.
Composing without a viewfinder can also remove hesitation. Freed from obsessing over perfect alignment, you begin to experiment more with foreground-background relationships, negative space, and unconventional angles. Over time, this freedom trains your eye and instinct to make better decisions automatically, even when you return to traditional shooting methods.
Optimizing Gear for a Blind Shooting Workflow
Some gear is naturally more suited to blind shooting than others. While most underwater rigs can be adapted, optimizing your setup will help make the experience smoother and more productive. The first area to consider is housing size and buoyancy. A lighter rig with neutral or slightly negative buoyancy is easier to maneuver one-handed or with outstretched arms. Bulky or negatively buoyant setups can become tiring to hold forward, reducing your shooting window.
Handles and grips are also essential. Dual handles with comfortable, rubberized grips provide better control when extending the rig. Wrist lanyards or bungee cords can act as safety nets if you lose grip while shooting quickly or in strong current.
Your dome port should be as clean and scratch-free as possible. Since you're pushing the rig through the water and possibly into fast or unpredictable environments, there's a higher risk of scratching the dome. Consider using a neoprene dome cover or protective lens hood while not actively shooting.
A wide-angle lens with minimal distortion and strong corner sharpness is another valuable asset. Some fisheyes produce strong curvature, which can work artistically but might reduce edge-to-edge sharpness. Higher-end optics provide more forgiving results when your composition isn’t exact, making them ideal for shooting blind.
Don’t forget your strobes' reliability. Quick recycle times, consistent output, and long-lasting batteries help keep your focus on composition and framing. Carrying extra batteries in a dry container on the boat allows you to rotate power sources and keep shooting without interruption.
The Psychological Edge of Shooting Blind
There’s a psychological shift that occurs when you begin using the shooting blind technique. Initially, it might feel unsettling not to see what you’re capturing. But over time, you begin to trust your instincts, anticipate subject movement, and respond more naturally to your environment. This change in mindset can be incredibly liberating.
Instead of being glued to your viewfinder, you become more aware of the scene around you. You observe how light filters through the water, how fish react to your presence, and how your position affects the scene. This heightened awareness can lead to better shot planning and more strategic movement underwater.
You also begin to appreciate the spontaneity that comes with not controlling every element of the frame. Sometimes the best images are unplanned. Shooting blind invites happy accidents—a shaft of light, an unexpected reflection, or a perfectly timed swim-by that magically fills the frame. Rather than focusing on perfection, you start chasing authenticity and energy.
Confidence grows with each dive. The more you use this method, the better you understand what your camera sees. Eventually, you’ll find yourself nailing complex shots from difficult angles that once seemed impossible. That’s the true power of this technique: it turns uncertainty into opportunity.
Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them
No method is without its challenges, and shooting blind presents a few of its own. One common issue is missed focus. Without the ability to refine your focal point on the fly, it’s possible to return from a dive with several unusable images. Combat this by using smaller apertures, continuous autofocus, and taking multiple shots per scene. With practice, your accuracy improves dramatically.
Another challenge is misalignment or cutting off key elements. Subjects may fall outside the frame or be positioned awkwardly. Bracketing your angles—shooting from slightly higher, lower, left, or right positions—solves this. Even just a few degrees of variation can rescue a shot.
Lighting inconsistency is also possible. If your strobes aren’t angled optimally or fire unevenly, your subject might be underlit or blown out. Regularly reviewing your strobe arm positions before each dive can help standardize your setup and reduce variability.
Finally, battery life can be a concern. Shooting in bursts and taking multiple redundant frames uses more power than precision single-frame shooting. Prepare by fully charging your batteries and carrying spares if possible.
Real-World Diving Scenarios for Shooting Blind
Blind shooting reaches its full potential when applied to the unpredictable nature of real underwater encounters. From the open ocean to tight reef crevices, different environments present distinct challenges that can be overcome—or even transformed—by using this technique. In the open ocean, where visibility is often broad but subjects move rapidly, shooting blind allows the photographer to respond with speed and adaptability. Take, for instance, diving in pelagic zones where blue sharks, dolphins, or fast-moving tuna cruise in and out of view. These encounters are typically fleeting, offering only seconds to react. By extending the rig toward the action without needing to stop and frame through a viewfinder, you increase your responsiveness dramatically.
In kelp forests, caves, or overhangs where space is restricted, physically maneuvering into place to frame a shot with your eye to the viewfinder may be impossible. Shooting blind allows you to slide your camera into tight spots, capturing marine life in their natural shelters without disturbing them or damaging the fragile environment. Even coral reefs benefit from this approach, where angled upward shots can be achieved without crashing into the reef by simply floating above and extending the rig downward and forward.
Shooting blind also proves useful during drift dives. In current-heavy environments, trying to compose through the viewfinder while being pushed or dragged is not only difficult but sometimes dangerous. Instead, aligning your rig in the general direction of the subject and firing while drifting can yield powerful, motion-filled compositions that feel alive and immersive.
Subject Types Ideal for Blind Shooting
Not every underwater subject responds well to proximity or prolonged attention. Animals that are easily startled, highly mobile, or prone to erratic movement benefit most from blind shooting. Sea lions are a perfect example. These energetic mammals move rapidly and unpredictably, often swimming directly at the diver before darting away. Traditional shooting techniques often fail to keep up with their agility. Blind shooting, however, allows you to extend your rig as they approach, hold steady, and shoot just as they veer past—often capturing sharp, dramatic images with strong directional movement.
Fast bait balls, composed of sardines or anchovies chased by predators, are another ideal subject. Their formation constantly shifts, making them challenging to frame conventionally. By reacting instinctively and placing your rig near or within the edge of the ball, you can record stunning images that convey the density, motion, and chaos of the moment.
Sharks also lend themselves well to blind shooting, particularly in locations where they’re not overly habituated to divers. Approaching a shark too closely may cause it to change direction or swim away. However, extending your camera setup ahead of you while maintaining your body distance can make the subject feel less threatened. In doing so, you increase your chances of getting close-up, eye-level shots that retain the shark’s natural movement.
Similarly, large schools of fish, swirling jacks, eagle rays, and even mantas can all be photographed using this technique. The key is recognizing the subject’s behavior and predicting its movement well enough to place the camera in its path without delay.
Capturing Sunbursts and Water Columns
One of the great visual rewards of shooting blind is the ease with which you can incorporate the sun and water column into your compositions. Positioning your camera at a steep upward angle while extending it away from your body allows you to integrate dramatic shafts of light and brilliant sunbursts—elements that add atmosphere, scale, and depth to your photos. Composing these shots traditionally requires positioning your body and face at an awkward angle, sometimes even flipping upside-down. With blind shooting, the maneuver becomes much more fluid.
To maximize this effect, shoot during midday hours when the sun is directly overhead. Position yourself slightly below or beside your subject and extend your rig upward and toward the light source. Use a small aperture like f/16 to create defined rays and control exposure. By placing your subject—whether it’s a diver, fish, or silhouette—between the camera and the light, you generate contrast and shape that anchors the frame. This is especially effective in locations with clear water, such as tropical destinations or offshore sites.
Capturing water columns from beneath a bait ball or a school of glassfish also benefits from this method. These shots communicate verticality and scale, especially when combined with patterns of light filtering through. In such scenes, your camera becomes a passive observer nestled into the environment, enabling more natural, immersive compositions.
Environmental Awareness and Shooting Blind
Blind shooting is not just a tool for creativity—it’s also a method that supports environmentally conscious diving. By allowing the photographer to maintain greater physical distance from sensitive habitats, such as coral reefs or delicate seagrass beds, blind shooting reduces the risk of contact or unintentional damage. Instead of hovering close to the subject and adjusting position continually, you can hold your body in a neutral buoyancy position and simply extend your rig into the scene. This practice helps preserve marine life and respects the integrity of the underwater landscape.
Photographers who care about conservation should also note that blind shooting minimizes diver intimidation toward marine animals. Subjects remain more relaxed when approached with care, resulting in more authentic behavior and better photo opportunities. By using a long-arm rig or pole extension, you can push your camera into the subject’s environment without forcing your presence upon it. In essence, the camera sees what you cannot, acting as a quiet observer rather than a source of disturbance.
This approach is particularly important when photographing shy species such as jawfish, garden eels, or cephalopods. These creatures often retreat at the first sign of close human presence. By holding position and extending your camera ahead—perhaps even around a coral head or into a crevice—you can document these animals without triggering their flight response.
Shooting Blind in Challenging Visibility
Low visibility is one of the most frustrating conditions for underwater photographers, but the blind shooting technique offers unique advantages here as well. In turbid water, using your viewfinder becomes difficult due to reduced contrast and overall haze. Instead of struggling to compose precisely, you can rely on blind shooting and your knowledge of subject placement to work around the conditions.
The technique becomes particularly useful when photographing larger animals such as seals, turtles, or reef sharks that still approach despite murkiness. Shooting blind allows you to get closer without waiting for a perfect visual confirmation. It reduces the time spent hesitating and increases your chances of capturing the subject during the brief moments it enters view.
To improve results in low visibility, keep your strobe arms closer to the camera to reduce the spread of light and minimize backscatter. Lower the strobe power slightly to prevent flaring in the suspended particles. Using a dome port with a sunshade or lens hood also helps direct light forward without reflecting ambient haze back into the lens. Practice makes this technique more reliable, even in conditions where your eyes see very little but your camera still sees enough to create compelling imagery.
The Role of Intuition and Flow
Shooting blind isn’t just a physical or technical approach; it’s also a mental and emotional one. It invites the photographer to let go of full control and enter a state of creative flow. This is particularly powerful underwater, where movement, light, and subjects are constantly shifting. When you surrender the need to see everything through the viewfinder, you open yourself to a more instinctive form of image-making—one that’s closer to dance than choreography.
This state of flow enhances your connection with the underwater world. You begin to sense patterns, anticipate movements, and feel your way into compositions that are otherwise impossible to pre-plan. It’s as though your camera becomes an extension of your body, responding to the environment as naturally as your own hands and eyes.
In this way, blind shooting parallels street photography above water. You don’t always know what will happen in a given moment, but you learn to recognize when something is about to unfold and how to position yourself for it. The difference is that underwater, the sense of gravity, sound, and space shifts everything into a quieter, more fluid dimension—making the use of intuition even more essential.
Case Study: Fast Action in La Paz
During a recent dive in La Paz, I encountered a massive bait ball that was being chased by sea lions. The fish moved in tight patterns, compressing and dispersing in response to each predator's strike. Trying to frame these bursts of motion through a viewfinder would have slowed me down and caused me to miss most of the action. Instead, I used blind shooting, extending my camera in front of me and angling slightly upward while swimming alongside the chaos.
I fired bursts of shots each time a sea lion made a pass. Many frames missed the mark, but several captured the exact moment a sea lion pierced through the school, jaws open, fish scattering. The best images showed both the motion of the predator and the density of the prey, with rays of sun illuminating the layers of movement. These shots would have been impossible with traditional techniques, simply because the action happened too fast.
In another dive, I used the same technique to photograph a diver silhouetted against a huge school of sardines. By remaining back and positioning my camera at waist height, I was able to compose an upward shot that placed the diver inside the bait ball, framed by the surrounding water and sunlight. Again, the spontaneity and ease of blind shooting allowed for creative results that would otherwise have required perfect timing and complex coordination.
The Artistic Potential of Imperfection
One of the unexpected joys of blind shooting is that it introduces a degree of imperfection that can enhance the image. Slight misalignments, off-center framing, or unexpected elements entering the frame can result in photos with personality, motion, and emotion. These imperfections give the photograph a sense of realness, reminding the viewer that it was captured in a dynamic, living environment.
In contrast to perfectly composed, technically flawless images, blind shots often feel more immediate and visceral. A fish half out of frame, a sunburst partially blocked, or a shadow creeping in can turn a standard photo into a storytelling image. These surprises cannot be fully predicted or repeated, giving the image a sense of uniqueness.
This is not to say that technique and planning don’t matter—they do. But when you allow for the unexpected, you make space for creativity to emerge in new and exciting ways. In blind shooting, the act of photographing becomes less about control and more about engagement.
Developing Your Unique Style Through Blind Shooting
As you begin to master blind shooting, you’ll notice your photographic style evolving. Because the technique encourages experimentation, surprise, and emotion over rigid precision, it naturally nurtures a more expressive and spontaneous visual language. Over time, you’ll find patterns emerging in your work—perhaps a fondness for unusual angles, dynamic lighting, or motion-based framing. These characteristics help define your underwater photography style.
Rather than mimic the polished compositions often found in contests or magazines, blind shooting enables a looser, more authentic aesthetic. Your shots may lean toward storytelling rather than technical perfection, emphasizing interaction between subject and environment, the layering of light and texture, or the immediacy of fleeting action. You’ll begin to recognize which blind compositions work consistently and which mistakes are worth keeping because they tell a compelling story.
Some photographers evolve a style characterized by near-silhouettes with glowing ambient light. Others produce images where the foreground subject is sharp and the background softens into abstract color. Many adopt a minimalist approach, using negative space to highlight form and gesture. Because blind shooting introduces a level of unpredictability, it challenges you to embrace these artistic possibilities and define your voice in a crowded field of underwater creators.
Post-Processing for Blindly Composed Shots
Blind shooting often results in raw images that benefit greatly from thoughtful post-processing. Since composition and exposure are not always precise, the editing phase becomes essential for turning decent frames into powerful photographs. Start by focusing on basic corrections: crop for balance, adjust exposure to recover details in highlights and shadows, and apply lens corrections to fix distortion common in wide-angle lenses.
Cropping is especially useful when fine-tuning composition. Because you couldn’t frame perfectly underwater, you can now adjust the horizon, center your subject, or reframe for drama and balance. Don’t be afraid to crop significantly if it helps enhance the story—especially when dealing with large files from high-resolution sensors.
White balance is another critical element. Underwater scenes often skew blue or green, so calibrating the image to natural tones—or intentionally enhancing them for creative effect—can dramatically improve mood and clarity. Use selective color correction to bring life to subjects like coral, fish, or skin tones while maintaining the character of the water background.
Clarity, dehaze, and contrast tools help bring out definition in low-visibility conditions or in shots where lighting was unpredictable. You may also want to use radial filters or gradient masks to guide the viewer’s attention toward your subject. Sharpen the focal point slightly and soften peripheral areas to create a subtle vignette effect.
For images that include backscatter or artifacts, retouching is often required. Use spot healing tools to clean up the frame without removing the natural character of the water. Finally, if the image conveys a mood or story, consider applying a consistent color grade or tone curve across a set of photos for a coherent series.
Integrating Blind Shooting into Professional Workflows
Professionals often rely on predictability and control, so introducing a technique like blind shooting may feel counterintuitive at first. However, once integrated, it can become a powerful tool in a photographer’s arsenal. The key is knowing when to deploy it and how to use it alongside more traditional approaches.
Blind shooting works best when you anticipate dynamic or high-speed events, or when physical limitations prevent ideal framing. On commercial shoots, blind shooting is perfect for behind-the-scenes candids, diver-environment interactions, and storytelling sequences that show the real action outside of staged moments. It also offers flexibility during safety stops, on drift dives, or when documenting difficult-to-reach marine life.
Photographers working with clients, magazines, or conservation groups can use blind shots to show a broader perspective—how the diver relates to the reef, how animals move naturally, how light shifts across the water column. These images often become narrative anchors in photo essays, serving as transitions between close-ups and wide scenic overviews.
To make blind shooting a reliable part of your workflow, treat it like any other technique. Practice consistently, analyze your results, and refine your equipment to suit your approach. Over time, it will feel as natural as shooting through the viewfinder, and you’ll instinctively know when to switch into “blind mode” for creative advantage.
Transforming Limitations Into Creative Fuel
One of the most compelling aspects of blind shooting is how it turns limitations into opportunities. You no longer view the lack of visual access as a problem but as a prompt to try something new. Instead of being bound by technical perfection, you’re inspired by possibility. This mental shift is transformative—not just for photography but for how you experience the underwater world.
You begin to understand that you don’t need to see every detail to capture the essence of a scene. You realize that movement, light, shadow, and story matter more than perfect focus or centered framing. You stop waiting for ideal conditions and start creating with what’s available. This shift builds resilience, agility, and artistic maturity.
Photographers who embrace imperfection often develop a deeper connection to their work. They explore moments rather than just documenting them. They respond emotionally to the dive experience and bring that emotion into the frame. Blind shooting fosters this connection by emphasizing reaction, intuition, and presence over premeditated control.
Moreover, it teaches you to let go of fear—fear of missing the shot, of getting it wrong, of not being perfect. You accept that some images won’t work and celebrate the ones that do. And sometimes, the most magical images are the ones you never saw coming until they appeared on your screen back on land.
Conclusion:
Shooting blind is more than just a technique—it’s a way of rethinking underwater photography. It offers practical solutions for challenging environments, enhances creative exploration, and pushes you to develop a deeper relationship with your subjects and surroundings. It’s not about abandoning the fundamentals but expanding them, layering spontaneity over structure, and embracing the unknown.
This method doesn’t replace traditional techniques. Instead, it complements them. It’s a strategy to deploy when speed, freedom, or unique perspectives are needed. It empowers you to capture shots that once seemed impossible—whether it’s the flash of a sea lion, the silhouette of a diver inside a bait ball, or the delicate texture of coral lit by sun rays from above.
As you continue your photographic journey, let blind shooting be both a challenge and an inspiration. Let it remind you that vision isn't always about sight, and that some of the best photographs come not from looking harder—but from letting go. Trust your instincts, prepare your tools, and extend your rig into the unknown. The ocean is waiting to surprise you. Let your camera go find it.