I recently had the incredible opportunity to attend Backscatter’s annual Digital Shootout in Bonaire! Every year, Backscatter hosts this two-week long underwater photography event, giving photographers and videographers a space to push their skills to the next level. Here, divers like me can learn from the best of the best in photo, video, and post-processing. 
The Shootout staff is an incredibly knowledgeable team from Backscatter, Nauticam, GoAskErin, and New Media Soup. On top of that, we’ve got a whole contingent of Sea Rovers here, both as guests and on the Shootout crew! Incredibly grateful to dive with and learn from such amazing and lovely people.
The team at Backscatter has been incredibly generous in providing me with a camera setup for this summer. 
I received my gear (a TG-7 camera and housing, with a Backscatter MiniFlash 2 and snoot) in its travel case a few days before I left for the Shootout, and met with the Backscatter crew via Zoom to help me understand how to put it all together and configure the settings ahead of time.I’m fairly new to underwater photography, so I really appreciate the Backscatter team taking the time before and during the Shootout to make sure I had all my questions answered! Once I got the hang of my camera, I got to try out some of the latest demo gear that Backscatter and Nauticam both brought to the Shootout for guests to demo over the course of the event, which was really exciting as well.
The Shootout schedule itself is packed: two morning boat dives, then after lunch we had the option to go on an afternoon dive (either on the boat or at the house reef) or to stay at the resort and stop in at the “Creative Cave,” where the Shootout crew were available to help troubleshoot or give advice and tips. Once the boats got back, there were two seminars hosted by one of the Shootout crew members. 
For example, on just the first day we had seminars in wide angle and macro techniques from Sea Rover and Backscatter founder Berkley White and Backscatter CEO Jim Decker, respectively. The next day, Sea Rover and renowned Lightroom master Erin Quigley (this year’s Boston Sea Rover Diver of the Year!) walked us all through her workflow and taught us the power of Lightroom Classic and how to effectively wield it. And that was just in the first two days! Every single seminar was somehow even more mind-blowing, and I learned an insane amount each time – whether it was about storytelling techniques, strobe placement, capturing light rays, or editing video.
On top of that, our dives themselves were really informative too!
I’ve only ever used the “underwater” mode on a camera before, so manipulating all the different settings to get the exact exposure I wanted was very new to me. But practice makes perfect, so I spent a lot of dives just focusing on deliberately dialing in my exposure and adjusting my strobes or snoot the way I wanted for each shot. The seminars were all so inspiring and I tried to apply as much as I could of what I had learned when planning my shots (“Do I have an interesting background? Is the shot dynamic? Does it capture behavior?”). Here are two of my favorites!
Once we got back on land I would hunker down in the Creative Cave and upload and edit my photos. Every other evening there was a critique session where we could submit a few photos for the Shootout crew to give feedback and tips for how to improve it (either in the water or in post). Even for the critiques where I hadn’t submitted anything, it was really helpful to hear their feedback on other people’s photos and think about how I might be able to improve my own. On the nights without a critique, one of the Shootout crew would give a talk about their own work, or about their personal journey, or about an interesting technique like fluorescence or blackwater.
I had so much fun and learned so much at the Shootout, and I can’t believe that it’s over! I can confidently say that this has been one of the most amazing learning experiences of my life, and I am so so grateful to have been able to start my underwater photography journey at the Shootout with guidance from such incredible and kind people.
— Sofia