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Hi @rschifreen
Such a cool encounter!!
There’s been a lot of chatter (for years) about how blue-rings might be stressed out by photographers and only then reveal their true colours…
However, I’ve seen several times blue-rings (or their cousin blue-lined octopus) flashing their blue rings while they are on the move, and i’m still some distance away (this is how I usually spot them) and these animals will also flash up their rings just when they’re excited (going for a hunt, mating, etc.).
On this encounter, it might have well been that it went for a little stroll around its den, looking for a meal.
Back to your photos, here are my thoughts image-by-image:
1/ this is a good intro shot to this series, but there is too much empty space to the right: I’d crop liberally from the top right. Then, consider local sharpening and / or a contrast boost to make the animal ‘pop’ a bit more.
2/ I love how you got its shadow underlining the octopus. As Bill suggested, tuning down the sand would help, even if it’s not as distractive as a white sand could be. It’s something I routinely do: select the subject & invert that selection, then reduce the highlihts (or overall exposure) just on that mask. You could also add a bit of vignetting to focus the attention onto the subject. Also, the tip of the octopus’ mantle is slightly too bright vs the rest, I’d tune that down with another local mask. Final touch: I’d slide the white balance (temp) a bit more to the blue. It will balance a slightly yellow colour cast, and make the rings pop more. You could also go in the colour mixer and saturate only the blue colour.
3/ The rings really pop on this image, well done! If It was my photo, I would crop about 40% from the bottom right, and use a mask to make the surroundings much, much darker. If you like, I am happy to post a version of how I’d edit it here, to show you how far I’d go. Or we do this during a coffee chat.
4/ Good story-telling, we can clearly see it’s intending to go back in the bottle. I would apply the same editing I mentioned for #2, plus tune down the sand behind the bottle a little more.
5/ A good final shot, same editing recommendations as #4.
Overall, these 5 images really work together to tell a story. If you face a similar opportunity in the future, I suggest using a tighter light beam to illuminate less of the surroundings, but really you can achieve a lot of that visual effect by post-processing the images you’ve got.
Looking forward to read other opinions on this series… and I can’t wait for our Dauin trip in June!!!