How Muck Diving Can Improve your Underwater Photography

By Brandi Mueller

The Coral Triangle holds some of the most biodiverse waters on Earth, even when diving just offshore in sand, seagrass beds, and coral patches. Brandi Mueller returns to Atlantis Dive Resort in Dumaguete, Philippines, for a muck diving photo adventure.

Shooting wide angle can help give others a scale of how small some of the critters are like this mimic octopus and perfect use of a muck stick. © Brandi Mueller

What is Muck Diving?

Muck diving was branded terribly many years ago. The name suggests something gross or dirty: bad visibility, muddy water and does not sound very appealing. But it is just the opposite. I would like to re-brand this type of diving as treasure hunting or critter finding or something that inspires more of what it actually is: a photographer’s dream, finding some of the ocean’s most weird and wild marine life in great abundance.

Mating mandarin fish, cheek-to-cheek with eggs. © Brandi Mueller

For those new to muck diving, initially the dive does not look that good. It may be a black sand bottom with little or no coral or what looks like an endless field of rocks, but soon-enough an eagle-eyed dive guide will call photographers out pointing at the sand. Getting closer the boring sand morphs into something amazing: a frogfish not moving an inch, a tiny whip coral goby perfectly camouflaged with its home or maybe even a seahorse that most divers would swim right over without noticing.

Even right off the beach from Atlantis Resort is a amazing strech of water filled with frogfish, blue ribbon eels and an epic night dive. © Brandi Mueller

How Muck Diving Can Improve Your Skills

On my last trip with other photographers, it really dawned on me how this type of diving can be a great platform for improving photo skills. It generally slows you down and forces you to look closely for subjects (similar to a night dive…and muck diving night dives can be pretty fantastic too).

Frogfish. © Brandi Mueller

The density of unique marine life means there is something to shoot everywhere one looks. One can argue that’s the case anywhere, but in Dumaguete our guide would find one subject and point it out, and then another close by. Soon enough all divers had something spectacular to shoot within view of each other. We could take our time shooting the same subject experimenting with camera settings, different lighting and waiting for special behaviors. Once we were done, we would switch spots. The shallow dive sites allowed for long dives and many photos taken. With such a high density of animals (and ample sedentary life like corals and sponges with interesting textures and designs) you can spend a whole dive in a very small area seeing and shooting a ton.

Slow moving nudibranchs are great for photos. Thecacera sp. pikachu nudi. © Brandi Mueller

Practice Makes Perfect

Another great thing about muck diving is that many subjects are slow moving. Take for instance the fantastically photogenic nudibranch. We find multiple species of nudibranchs on every dive. Even the speediest of nudis move very slow, allowing a photographer to spend a lot of time with them. The dive guides had a good idea of which sites we could find certain critters and allowed us to return to the same site over and over again in hopes of perfecting a shot of something special.

A muck diving trip usually involves lots of diving. Many resorts like Atlantis that specialize in this kind of diving allow for up to five dives a day. So you can really shoot, shoot, and shoot some more. Practice makes perfect.

Whip coral goby with diopter. © Brandi Mueller

Specialty Dives

Pay attention for unique dives, like a mandarinfish dive. This colorful dragonet hides within coral branches during the day, but at twilight the become more active, trying to find a mate for sunset. Just as it gets dark, they pair off, cheek-to-cheek, and rise out of the coral. To capture this, divers show up at twilight and stay at the same spot the whole dive waiting. Red lights are used to help entice the mood (or maybe white light just disturbs them and they won’t mate). If you time the shot perfectly, you can capture the female releasing eggs and the male releasing sperm.

Seahouse backlit by a flashlight. © Brandi Mueller

Night dives are also amazing in the muck. A whole new cast of characters come out and the treasure hunt continues in the dark. This is also the time to try fluorescence (fluoro) night diving where you use special filters to reveal marine life that fluoresces.

Fluoro night dive. © Brandi Mueller

Muck Diving Tips

• Get creative and try different things: change camera settings, lighting, try snoots or diopters.

• Dedicate an entire dive to a technique. Muck diving provides a unique opportunity to shoot nonstop through an entire dive. Pick something and stick with it the whole dive. For example, bokeh, where much of the image is blurry with one specific feature in focus, using a wide aperture like F2.8.

• Bring slates. I like to write a slate with ideas of what to try and settings to use.

• Diopters are really fun to play with and capture super macro.

• Get creative with lighting. Try adding a snoot, backlighting the subject, or just moving the strobes around in different positions.

• Review images each night. Pay attention to settings and lighting you like and the ones that didn’t work. Keep those in mind for the next day’s shooting.

• Have good buoyancy. This is imperative for all underwater photography. Divers who are flailing around tend to scare away marine life, photos are out of focus because shooter isn’t staying still and they can stir up the bottom and reduce visibility and increase backscatter in images.

• Do your research. Knowing more about your subjects will help your photography. Research can help with fish identification and also unusual behaviors. For example, clownfish are often aggressive when they have eggs. Watching where they go can lead you to eggs they have laid next to the anemone. You might observe them blowing on the eggs or fanning them with their fins to prevent algae growth. Learning where a bucket list critters lives can help you to find it. This also works in reverse. If you see something and have no idea what it is, snap a photo so you can look it up later. Fish I.D. books are your best friend.

• Bring your wide angle lens. Muck diving naturally lends to macro photography, but there can be great wide angle opportunities too. I had fun capturing my friends while they were shooting.

Blue ribbon eel. © Brandi Mueller

Muck Diving Etiquette

Often while muck diving you may come across a bucket list fish or something you’ve never seen. While I encourage spending a lot of time shooting it, be aware of you photo dive buddies too. Take a few shots and then let someone else have a turn. Once everyone has had a turn, go back and shoot some more.

Don’t stir up the bottom. Many of the muck critters live on the sand and it is easy to silt out the area (and send a sand storm into your and your buddy’s images). Be aware of fins, particularly when finished shooting. Try to swim backwards to prevent accidently finning over the subject, which can scare it away, cause a silt out or even send something like a nudibranch flying into the water column from the force of water behind your kicks. Muck sticks are great tool that can be used to help steady yourself to get an in-focus shot and keep you off the bottom. Be aware of where you place you muck stick to not harm coral or marine life.

Be kind to the animals. Don’t harass and don’t encourage dive guides to move animals into better positions or disturb them. Getting a photo isn’t worth harming or killing a delicate marine creature.

The next time you hear about an opportunity to “muck dive,” don’t be turned off by the name. This type of diving can lead to incredible photo opportunities and is a great way to work on shooting techniques.

Ambassador Brandi Mueller has been nursing an addiction to WWII wrecks for years now. She fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming a Marine Biologist, then set off to travel the world exploring and teaching underwater photography. She published The Airplane Graveyard in 2018 documenting the history of wrecks photographed during her years in Kwajalein Atoll. She moved on to captain the MV Truk Odyssey in 2019 and we're never quite sure where she'll turn up next. Read more...

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Go Small or Go Home: Macro Photography in the Philippines

Macro Minded: Creating Meaningful Underwater Macro Photo and Video

Fluorescence and Luminance Underwater Photography

DS230 Strobes in the Red Sea

Underwater Museums: What Remains of WWII in the Pacific by Brandi Mueller