Happy Easter 2013

April 1, 2013 by suzywalker

Before the Easter break is officially over I thought I’d wish you all a Happy Easter

First Attempts at Light Painting with iPad & Sparklers

March 24, 2013 by suzywalker

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.

Happy Valentines Day

February 14, 2013 by suzywalker

I hope you like my two little harlequin shrimp from Bali (above) who are enjoying a fine dining experience of starfish legs. It reminds me of the prince song, I wonder if they have any coffee. I tried to snoot the light into the corner so it looked like a heart shape, hopefully that comes across

Happy Valentines Day Mike!

Here’s hoping you are all having a great day whether you have a special valentine or are chilling out on your own today in an anti valentine tradition.

Colour of the Year 2013: Emerald

December 27, 2012 by suzywalker

“Lively. Radiant. Lush… A color of elegance and beauty
that enhances our sense of well-being, balance and harmony.”

Every year Pantone chooses its colour of the year. This year as you may already know it is Emerald. This year I’m not exactly hot off the press and I’m not the only one who uses this as an excuse to look through my photos to see what might match, see this years post from Mark Graf and Behance from earlier this month.

For those that are landlocked green is the colour of nature (for me its blue but we have to make allowances here). Emerald Green was one of my mothers favourite colours so this is a tribute post to her. I’ve tried to choose photos from my archive that I feel best show the vibrant and lively side of Emerald green….

I hope you enjoyed this green post. I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and if I don’t post again before then have a happy new year!

Best Photos 2012

December 21, 2012 by suzywalker

As in previous years it is time to review and select my best/favourite photos of 2012. I always really enjoy looking back over all the posts and pictures I’ve made throughout the year and reflecting upon how fortunate I am to go to such great places and have such supportive people in my life. With no further ado, and in no particular order, here are this years top ten (click each for larger version on pbase)….

‘Taj Mahal’ Cenote with Eleo. While we were in Mexico we popped down the coast to see the amazing underwater caves called “Cenotes”. When the sun shines through the holes in the jungle surface these caves are simply magical. I did several blog posts on them because each of them have different characteristics.

Cardinal and friends. I liked this one because even though its taken in the ocean it gives an aquarium vibe. Diving on a tropical reef is so often like being on the inside of a giant aquarium I like that when I capture it in my photos. I got quite a lot I was please with from Bali.

Operatic Nemo. This little guy looked like he was singing an aria for me (in deep baritone). I also love him because he won me the end of trip competition in Bali.

Fish are friends not food. The amazing thing about whalesharks is what they eat. The largest fish in the sea eats the smallest thing, plankton. I liked this photo above the other more traditional mouth open whaleshark feeding shots because of the little remora fish swimming for all his worth to try and get out of the whalesharks mouth. Remora fish usually hook onto other sea creatures for a free ride so this scene amused me even though the little fish is in no danger.

London Triangles. This year I started a new photography degree course (and a new blog to go with it). I’ve had great fun trying to bend the exercises into my photographic areas of interest. This one was from an exercise on triangles and patterns. Its taken looking up into a building on the south bank.

Singapore skyline. We stopped over in Singapore for a few nights on our way to Cambodia and I indulged in my joy of panoramas with this one at night take from Marina Bay.

Duomo. We went on a city break with a friend of ours to Florence. Its long been on my ‘must see’ list of places to go and it didn’t disappoint. As with many beautiful cities, florence has been photographed millions of times. I really liked this view of the Duomo in the early morning. Its one of the only times to get near it when there are no people but as you can see there are still cars zipping by. For me it infuses old and new.

Contrasts Assignment. I had a lot of fun creating the lighting for this assignment with some desk lamps and tracing paper. You can see the whole assignment here.

Decorator crab. This little crab knows a thing or two about camouflage. He’s actually got live corals living on his shell to enable him to blend in more easily with the reef. I found him while searching for triangles for my second assignment.

Giant spotty fish. I like this whaleshark photo as it shows off his spots. As tradition dictated we could only refer to them as ‘giant spotty fish’ until we’d seen one in case we jinxed the trip.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Since choosing just ten is very hard its became tradition for me to briefly mention the spill over … (click for larger):

I hope you enjoyed reviewing my images of the year with me. If you’d like to see more I’ve put my fav 100 of 2012 here. Merry Christmas & Happy new year everyone!

Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year – review

October 29, 2012 by suzywalker

Paul Nicklen / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

Last Friday we made our annual pilgrimage to the Natural History Museum to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year. We have a tradition to go to one of the great “late events” to see the exhibition and enjoy a nice glass of wine after work on a friday every year. This year we saw the exhibition a little earlier than usual which might explain why it was so busy. The evening had completely sold out. I prefer to see it when its slightly less busy but that didnt make the photographs any less spectacular, just harder to get to.

Please click on the images in this post to show more information about each, these are copyright the artists and Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012 so please don’t reuse without their permission.

Paul Nicklen / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

In previous years I’ve often been disappointed with the underwater section, with maybe one of two outstanding images but the rest – and often the winners – being somehow less good than I know the images out there by some underwater photographers to be. However, not the case this year. The excellent Paul Nicklen took overall winner of the whole shebang and well deserved it was too. I’ve long been a fan (if you dont have his book on polar bears, you should hot foot it over to amazon now). I couldn’t quite make up my mind whether I liked the winner (with the many penguins, shown above at the top of the post) or the runner up in the underwater category (with the single penguin streaming to the surface – not shown here) better, but they were both amazing. He also took winner for the birds behaviour category with these cute little penguins springing into view (above).

And a huge well done to all the other underwater photographers who made the list for making the show for me! This one by Claudio Gazzaroli was specially commended and taken in the Grand Cayman sandbar which I know well, although I’ve never been there at evening time.

Claudio Gazzaroli / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

I was also very pleased to see more and more underwater photographs creeping into the other categories. This photo by Luciano Candisani won the Behaviour: Cold-Blooded Animals category.

Luciano Candisani / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

Also in that category was a close up of a jawfish brooding his eggs in his mouth by Steven Kovacs.

As usual for this competition there was a strong sustainability theme (although not as strong as last years). These photographs from the special award category “The world in ours hands” show the seedier side of humanity and our impact on the natural world and are quite upsetting ….

Huang-Ju Chen / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

Paul Hilton / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

Hopefully photographs such as those will raise even more awareness about the horrors of captive dolphin shows and perhaps even bring and end to sharks-fin soup – before we bring an end to sharks for good.

There seemed to be a lot of polar bears in the show (although none from Paul Nicklen that I saw). This one by Anna Henly won the “The world in ours hands” category.

Anna Henly / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

I also enjoyed the Animal portraits category – this is often the best in the show. I liked the winning crocodile well enough but this little guy made me laugh so I had to feature him here (as runner up). It seems that I’m not the only one to think so too as he seemed to be the face of the exhibition:

John E Marriott / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

And last but not least, the landscape section blew me away again this year…

Vladimir Medvedev / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

Thilo Bubek / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

I hope you enjoyed my little review. Thanks to the guys who gave me access to the press pack to use these amazing images with permission. You can see an online preview of the show here, but I strongly urge you to get down there and visit the exhibition in person.

[Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year is owned by the Natural History Museum and
BBC Worldwide]

PhotoFriday – ‘Vibrant’

October 19, 2012 by suzywalker

This week’s Photo Friday entry: ’Vibrant’

The great thing about revisiting a place many years running is you can also revisit concepts that you didn’t quite get right the first time around. The bright orange anthias in the red sea make the reef look so vibrant but I’m yet to get a photo of them that I’m happy with. Here are two examples. Let me know what you think in the comments and I’ll take on board any interesting constructive suggestions next year!

If you want to see more of my underwater photos from various places then check out the galleries in my Reef Beasties Gallery.

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

World Ocean Day – Celebrate while we still can

June 8, 2012 by suzywalker

So here’s a sobering thought – In 40 Years We Could Face An Ocean Without Fish. Go check out that link and see if you still want to order fish for lunch today In fact I’ve seen this decline myself in the lessening aggregations of Snapper in the Red Sea each year.

The theme for this year’s world ocean day is Youth: the Next Wave for Change.
If we can get young people into preserving the ocean now then there might be some life left in it for their children to enjoy… otherwise there will only be the photos we can take today and the sour fishy aftertaste of extinction. Please take a moment today to check out these links and see how you can help – even if it’s only be spreading the word. World Ocean Day – “Wear Blue, Tell Two”. Hopefully this blog post will reach more than two

A while back I put together a list of sustainable seafood guides. They are displayed below in my sidebar but here again for convenience:

Here’s a few of my pictures to celebrate the beauty and life we still have for now: