PhotoFriday – ‘Artificial Light’

This week’s Photo Friday entry: ’Artificial Light’

As a compliment to the theme a few weeks ago of Natural Light, this weeks photofriday theme is Artificial light. Most of the images you will see have some form of artificial light source if only to bring back the colours of the undersea realm. The colours start to drop off from about 6m down, starting with the colour red as the first to go until all you are left with is blue (in warm water anyway). To bring back the amazing colours you need to bring your flashguns in with you. The photo of the tiny cowrie above is 100% artificial light. Also, below, top down abstract on this Christmas Tree Worm & Jawfish with eggs.

With those above I was using flat lighting with the strobes either side of my camera lens and both at the same power. The light on the jawfish is the same lighting position but the power in the right hand light is stronger causing a slight shadow to add a subtle depth to the image.

With this image of the tops of tube sponges I was trying to get the hang of something called edge lighting. This is where you put the strobes facing backwards, so the very edge of the light from the strobe leaks out over the surface of the subject leaving the background in darkness. This is why you dont see the whole sponge and seabed here, if I had been entirely successful you may only have seen the circles of the tops of the sponges in this image…

But the images I find the most evocative of the underwater world are when artificial and natural light combine to bring back the colours in the foreground but successfully balance the background with the wonderful blue of the sea. Here are a few I liked from my trip to Raja Ampat, this first one uses three light sources, the artificial light to bring back the colours of the foreground, the natural light of the blue water and the divers torch shining into the lens.

You can see more Raja Ampat photos here.

If you want to see my underwater photos from various places then check out the galleries in my Reef Beasties Gallery. Or my best from 2012 here.

See all the other photo Friday entries (and submit your own) for ‘Artificial Light’ here.

PS: I’m currently selling my 60mm/D300 underwater macro set-up. Click here for more details & the full list of equipment for sale or email me at scubasuzy-sellingnikongear@yahoo.co.uk. Thanks for supporting my work!

PhotoFriday – ‘Natural Light’

This week’s Photo Friday entry: ’Natural Light’

Quite often I go underwater and turn off my strobes and just shoot with the natural light. The most spectacular and dramatic lighting comes in from shafts of sun shining in at the tops of caves or through the beams of jettys. The photo above was taken in a Mexican Cenote (a giant cavern filled with fresh water). So next time you find yourself in a dark place, try turning off the lights and see what natural light there is.

The best place to take natural light subjects underwater in the open ocean is as you can imagine right at the surface. The warm mexican sun makes the surface reflect this whaleshark and makes the tiny eggs (the food the whalesharks are there to gather) glint and sparkle in the sunshine

You can see more whaleshark and cenote photos here.

If you want to see my underwater photos from various places then check out the galleries in my Reef Beasties Gallery. Or my best from 2012 here.

See all the other photo Friday entries (and submit your own) for ‘Natural Light’ here.

PS: I’m currently selling the camera that took these photos. Click here for more details & the full list of equipment for sale or email me at scubasuzy-sellingnikongear@yahoo.co.uk. Thanks for supporting my work!

PhotoFriday – ‘At Rest’

This week’s Photo Friday entry: ’At Rest’

The manatees hang out in the hot springs at Crystal River in Flordia (they sleep there over night for warmth in the winter). Its a wonderfully tranquil place when the tourist are behaving themselves and obeying the rules set down to protect the manatees. Rule number one, do not disturb a sleeping manatee. If they want to come over to you for a scratch then they will but they sleep in the springs for protection and we should respect that. It is fascinating to watch them rest though. They pivot on their fin up to the surface to breathe without waking.

You can see more manatee photos here.

If you want to see my underwater photos from various places then check out the galleries in my Reef Beasties Gallery. Or my best from 2012 here.

See all the other photo Friday entries (and submit your own) for ‘At Rest’ here.

PS: I’m currently selling the set up that took these photos. Click here for more details & the full list of equipment for sale or email me at scubasuzy-sellingnikongear@yahoo.co.uk. Thanks for supporting my work!

PhotoFriday – ‘Distance’

This week’s Photo Friday entry: ’Distance’

In the warm tropic seas around the world you can often see far into the distance because the visibility of the water is so good. This allows us to photograph impressively large shipwrecks. However due to the properties of light underwater the loss of colour is more apparent the further away the subject. For example in this Kittiwake shot below I’m very close to the front of this ship maybe 1m even though it doesn’t look it. As you get further into the photo the back of the ship looks quite blue.

If you want to see my underwater photos from various places then check out the galleries in my Reef Beasties Gallery. Or my best from 2012 here.

See all the other photo Friday entries (and submit your own) for ‘Distance’ here.

PS: I’m currently selling all my nikon gear. Click here for more details & the full list of equipment for sale or email me at scubasuzy-sellingnikongear@yahoo.co.uk. Thanks for supporting my work!

First Attempts at Light Painting with iPad & Sparklers

For one hour one March 23rd people around the world were turning off their lights to raise awareness of climate change, this one hour is called Earth Hour. So once its all dark – then what? Myself, @RealMichaelToye & @LBrimson took this opportunity to play with a feature of my new camera: Live Time. This is like bulb mode only better because you can see the photo building up on the screen. We had a few technical difficulties (I think theres some settings I haven’t quite figured out and it kept going to sleep and not starting the exposure when expected) but overall we had a lot of fun (and delicious Mojitos, thanks Mike) and celebrated Earth Hour in style. Here’s what we came up with. For most of them we used indoor sparklers (glad we didnt buy the outdoor ones since it was snowing)!! But for this Earth Hour one above we used an app called eightbit on the iPad (we tried it on the iphone but it didnt quite ever come out). We were in the pitch black but I bet when we try this again with some lights on the scene we’ll get some great images with spooky floating text.

You can see the full gallery here.

PhotoFriday – ‘Machines’

This week’s Photo Friday entry: ’Machines’

There’s lots of machines in the ocean if you care to look, discounting the still functional boats and subs etc of course. Wrecks have a surprising amount of machines on them. This motorbike above from the Thistlegorm wreck in the Red Sea for example. It also have trains and trunks and all sorts on there!

On the Kittewake in Grand Cayman there are all sorts of machines on there…

I found it quite interesting to see this decompression chamber on there – I’ve never seen one before (luckily)!

There are also the machines on the boat that fill up our air tanks and make it possible for us to scuba dive.

If you want to see my underwater photos from various places then check out the galleries in my Reef Beasties Gallery. Or my best from 2012 here.

See all the other photo Friday entries (and submit your own) for ‘Machines’ here.

PS: I’m currently selling the set up that took these photos. Click here for more details & the full list of equipment for sale or email me at scubasuzy-sellingnikongear@yahoo.co.uk. Thanks for supporting my work!

PhotoFriday – ‘Mornings’

This week’s Photo Friday entry: ’Mornings’

I’ve got to admit, I’m not at my best first thing in the morning. For Landscape Photographers morning time is their bread & butter. Sunrise & dawn is often a time of most beautiful light. Sometimes if you are in an area near water a nice mist forms that has dispelled by the time most people are up and about (as in the photo above taken in Crystal River in Florida). And of course the obvious reason – the lack of people. Nature is allowed to wake up gracefully (apart from a photographer or two) before all the humans arrive with their boats and cars.

We got up very early in Crystal River to see how many manatees were hanging out in the springs (they sleep there over night for warmth in the winter). This blog post has reminded me that I still have many photos to go through from that trip so I can’t show you an early-morning-many-manatees-sleeping photo like I wanted too. Here’s a picture of a little baby one from later from about 8am though…

If you want to see my underwater photos from various places then check out the galleries in my Reef Beasties Gallery. Or my best from 2012 here.

See all the other photo Friday entries (and submit your own) for ‘Mornings’ here.

PS: I’m currently selling the set up that took these photos. The top image was taken using Nikon D300 and 18-200mm lens. The manatee image was taken with Nikon D300, Tokina 10-17 FE, Subal housing with Dome port. Click here for more details & the full list of equipment for sale or email me at scubasuzy-sellingnikongear@yahoo.co.uk. Thanks for supporting my work!

PhotoFriday – ‘Familiar Faces’

This week’s Photo Friday entry: ’Familiar Faces’

Although its growing rapidly the warm water diving scene isn’t all that large and we often find ourselves meeting the same people on the trips we take (or even sometimes on the plane going on different trips)! So here is a post where you might recognise some faces. Above is Mike, also known as one half of the Lovebirds and photoshop Guru. Below is a photo of me, also known as the other half of the lovebirds.

This is Jarret, the originator of the term Lovebirds.

Here is Alex & Eleo, totally acting like lovebirds here

This is Kathryn:

This is Lena in her pre-big-camera days..

Here’s one of Kay (we were testing off camera lighting hence the spooky look)

Heres another couple of Mike because after all he is awesome (even if I am bias)!

I hope you’ve enjoyed meeting some of my friends.

If you want to see my underwater photos from various places then check out the galleries in my Reef Beasties Gallery. Or my best from 2012 here.

See all the other photo Friday entries (and submit your own) for ‘Familiar Faces’ here.

Mantas! Raja Ampat

The last stop on our trip was Dampier Strait where a place called Blue Magic really lived up to its name.

You don’t often here complaints of too many fish on a diving trip but sometimes the little fish would obscure the action! There were thousands of them.

As I was starting to go up for my safety stop these two mantas were swimming around and around next to me at 7m. It was really magical.

I have some video, Mantas are much more impressive when you see them moving but I need to process it so stay tuned for more updates

Mangroves, Raja Ampat

Our next stop of our little tour of Raja Ampat was in the area of Yanggefo where there are mangroves. We dived a dive site called Citrus Ridge and snorkelled up to the mangroves. They weren’t as pretty as the blue water mangroves we saw last time but we didnt fancy getting eaten by the crocodiles!

Earlier in the trip some of the group had snorkelled out to take split shots and I didn’t go because I was told I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere with such a small dome (about 3.5″ mini dome). Since I’m someone who likes to try things for herself I swam off to try under-over (half in and half out of the water) shots with my tiny camera. I came up with the image above which everyone was really surprised by.

Citrus Ridge is a divesite full of cool critters. We found this jawfish with eggs sitting in his hole on the sea floor. And this woebegone shark hiding under a coral shelf, chockfull of colourful soft corals.

The mangroves are a nursery for all manor of juvenile fish. We even saw a couple of baby reef sharks cruising back and forth.

These little stripy fish are called Archer fish because they spit water up into the trees to knock down inspects into the water to eat.