Keeping London Moving
 
Big Shot
 
Flyby shooting
Photographer: Louise Murray  Written by Simon Rogerson
 
Cormorant and bait ball
As a professional photojournalist, Louise Murray is familiar with the demands of editors, and knows to take plenty of illustrative shots when on assignment. However, she also has an eye for the sort of photo that leaps off the page and grabs a reader’s attention, the glory image. So it is with this month’s Big Shot, in which Murray captures a fast-moving scene – cormorants streaming past a bait ball in Mexico.
DIVE readers should be familiar with Murray’s work, as we have been running her stories since 1996. She specialises in science-based features with an element of adventure, and travels widely while researching. She has learned to be flexible while in the field, to make the most of what the sea brings her way.
Murray took this picture at Los Islotes, a rocky outcrop close to La Paz in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez She had been hoping to photograph the resident California sealions (indeed there are some just visible in the frame), but her interest shifted when she saw seabirds descending on what was obviously a baitball. Good photographs of seabirds underwater are rare, and this was an opportunity to record them hunting baitfish underwater.
Concerned that she would spook the cormorants if she made a clumsy approach, Murray decided to dive deep and approach the baitball from below. It was also a largely silent approach, as she was using a Dragar Dolphin semi-closed rebreather. Cormorants, although predators in this scenario, can feel vulnerable in the water, so a low-key approach was key.
As she drew closer to the action, it became clear that she would need to take multiple exposures to ensure a good result. The cormorants were streaming through the baitfish at high speed, so it was a case of anticipating their route and firing off a few shots as they zoomed by. She was using a Nikon D100 in a Sea and Sea housing with a Subtronic mega housing; today, most professionals use a housed Nikon D200 or D2X, but the D100 nonetheless has a fine track record, and second-hand bargains are now starting to appear. She used a Nikon 12-24mm lens at around 125mm, and took this image at F8 and a shutter speed of 1/320th of a second to freeze the action.
The sun kept disappearing behind clouds, so Murray had to cope with varying light levels in addition to the speedy, elusive cormorants. ‘My solution was to use the ISO setting, increasing it from 200 to 400,’ she says. ‘This is the digital equivalent of changing to faster film, and it allowed me to use a fast shutter speed and a generalist aperture setting.
‘The birds were a fairly drab brown, and decided to use their silhouette as part of a wider scene rather than trying to get a close-up. The trick was to frame the scene by lighting the baitfish with a little splash of light – my Subtronic Mega flashgun was on one of its lowest settings, as these little guys reflect light like a hundred tiny mirrors.’
The water was relatively warm, but Murray confesses to being ‘a whimp’ with the cold, and wore a drysuit to keep comfortable. She believes that she once suffered hypothermia after a long day of diving in the tropics, so it comes as a surprise that she does much of her work in the Arctic region. Diving in sub-zero temperatures is made more comfortable with her heated Typhoon tunic undersuit, but she keeps going back because of the outstanding photo opportunities, and the knowledge that her pictures are more likely to be unique.
Murray turned to photojournalism in 1992 after working as a commodities trader in the City. Her penchant for science-based stories comes from her first job as a biotechnologist, but you get the feeling she chooses jobs partly on the grounds of the travel opportunities. At the time of writing, she was due to fly to Hudson’s Bay in Canada to try and photograph polar bears and beluga whales. With typical hold luggage of between 50 and 100kg, we wish her good luck at the check-in counter!
Interview by Simon Rogerson