North Red Sea 2009

I wanted to tell you a little about our recent trip to Egypt (as promised).

As usual, click on the images to see them at a larger size.

This is our second trip with Alex Mustard this year (our 1st was Raja Ampat in Feb) but this one was a full on photo-workshop.

We Flew to Egypt on Monarch (groan) into Sharm El Sheikh, luckily we didnt have to stay there, our liveaboard was waiting for us at the Military port. MV Whirlwind of the Tony Backhurst fleet was a very comfortable boat.

Alex runs this workshop trip ever year at this time to try and see the huge schools of snapper (& other large fish) that come to spawn in the area on these weeks. It was a little daunting as these fish are HUGE and because of the properties of the fisheye lens I was using I had to get very close to them! Also, strangely for this time of year the visibility wasn’t that great. Usually in the Red Sea the water is gin clear and you feel like you can see for miles. In amongst these snappers I feel like I was in a snow flurry so I am surprised I actually got any good photos of them.

We also head over to Tiran Island for a bit (since we weren’t having as much luck as usual with the Snapper). This trip was primarily a wide-angle trip but those who know me know I don’t go on any underwater jaunt without my trust 60mm macro lens. I tried to “go-wide” with that too this time to shoot some fish portraits but I couldn’t resist the odd tiny macro fish or occasional abstract.

We also saw a rather large amount of shipwrecks (this is the North Red Sea after all) including the Ghiannis D, Thistlegorm & Yolanda.

This was actually a treat (even though I’m not fussed about wrecks usually) because Mike has never seen the Thistlegorm & I’ve not been back since I first learnt to dive. I enjoyed seeing all the Motorbikes, trucks & things but I was still really spooked by the wellies. It was nice on the Ghiannis D too since we had Mr Alex (Magic Filters) Mustard himself with us to give us guidance on how to use them effectively. I still dont think I got the hang of it properly but it was good fun to try something new.

One of the things I really like about going on photo workshops in a group is you tend to meet really nice people. Everyone helps everyone else out. Julian ended up giving a load of us a Lightroom tutorial or two (and also taking me under his wing for my 1st snapper experience) so many thanks to him. Also, I’d like to thank Robin for being an excellent model & stand in buddy. And many thanks of course go to Alex for giving us such a great trip.

The only thing I was disappointed in (apart from getting really sick on the last day when we stayed in Sharm) was the poor moray eel I found who had a giant hook in his mouth C’mon people this is supposed to be a protected marine area! I guess the usually vigilant Egyptian authorities must have missed this one (or else he swam into the area from outside).

my full underwater gallery can be found here. Mikes above water gallery can be found here.

Ultimate Indonesia – Raja Ampat

Well, what can I say but what a holiday! There was laughter, there were tears, there was awe, there were men with guns and there are photos. We stayed on the seven seas liveaboard with Alex Mustard and Graham Abbot for 12 days and nights of fantastic diving in Raja Ampat. Raja Ampat is a marine protected area in Indonesia west of Papa New Guinea.

Alex Mustard

Most people in underwater photography circles have heard of him, author of a couple of books (I really liked reefs revealed), numerous articles and judge on some major underwater photographic competitions.  In person, Alex was friendly and relaxed. This was a group-lead photo tour rather than one of his specific photo workshops but he was still happy to give advice when asked (which I think we all took great advantage of) and he seemed to genuinely like sitting going through peoples photos with them. I found that it was fascinating to watch a professional photographer at work, from ideas, to subject selection, to shooting technique and finally image selection and rejection. It was good fun to dive with him, he and I almost missed lunch because we were mucking about for too long in the mangroves! As a tour lead he did a great job, especially in the airport to and from Sarong to Manado (the only place where we checked in en masse).

Graham Abbott

We were lucky to have Graham from diving4images.com as our dive guide throughout our stay on the Seven seas (I didn’t actually get to dive with the seven seas dive guide, Tommy). Graham planned the route we would take and what dive sites we would go on and in what order to get the best of our photographic time in Raja Ampat. He has a fish & critter Id book inside his head and is an amazing spotter with eyes like an underwater hawk! He showed everyone what they wanted to see and was very patient when everyone took turns to take photos of the same tiny things. He is a very funny guy, I know that Lena was especially impressed with his underwater modeling and eye crossing techniques.

Seven seas

The liveaboard was one of the most luxurious we’ve been on. The rooms were quite large (for a boat) and ours had ample space underneath the tall king-size bed to store the baggage and useful drawers for clothes and gadgets. The food was very nice, they seemed to have no problem catering for peoples dietary requirements (Alex and I dined on chicken when they served up seafood meals for example) and I never went hungry as there was a steady supply of snacks throughout the day. It seemed like there was a lot of space, it never seemed like there were too many of us. There were several spaces for us to spread out and attend to our cameras on without having to take them down to our rooms.

Diving

The diving operation was very slick. All managed by a lovely American guy called Stuart. He took video throughout the trip that we could buy at the end. The were crew great with handling the cameras and the diving gear. We had three dive boats to dive from (two tender boats and one rib). The tender boats were easier to dive from (they had ladders) but the groups on them were large. There was only ever four divers on the rib – maximum, so I was glad to be on that one with Alex, Mike and sometimes either Stuart or Graham.

The crew were very dedicated, sometimes sitting in the boats in their bright yellow rain macs waiting for us for over an hour. They seemed to know where we were at all times and when we ascended they were there on hand to help us up into the boats. Seeing how ludicrously bad I was at getting into the rib they supplied a little ladder for it which I thought was very sweet

Critters

Well, this holiday certainly had critters galore! I’ve never seen so many fish and such lush and amazing coral in one place. The few days in Lembeh were supposed to allow us to get the macro out of our system. Raja Ampat is billed as a largely wide angle paradise, and while that is most definitely true (I took more wide-angle shots in those 12 days that I have in my life) it didn’t stop the macro lenses creeping back on throughout the week when the two words ‘pygmy’ and ‘seahorse’ were mentioned. I didn’t get to see the Denise ones but I’ve never seen weedy pygmy sea horses before so was especially please to see them. It was also a nudibranch hunters dream, with all different varieties on each dive.

Also, it was the first time Mike and I had ever seen manta rays! It was very exciting to see them and they came so close and they are so big! I think I must be the only person in the world to be intimated but such a gentle creature but they are very, very big.

Mangroves
I loved the day we had in the blue water mangroves. It was such a different and special environment (I wish we’d spent a little longer really). I haven’t processed all the photos from the mangroves yet so I will do an additional blog post later on for that.

Men with guns
We travelled overnight sometimes to get to a new area. One particular morning we had arrived at a new spot, the sea was very calm and it was just past dawn. Speeding across the water was a small boat with 3 or 4 men in it, one toting a rather large machine gun. Not something that one usually sees over breakfast so it made me sit up and take notice. They pulled up and boarded, pirates I thought? Apparently not. Stuart told them to leave the gun in the boat (which they did). Apparently we were rather too close to their pearl farm and they’d had some robberies, they thought we were pirates and had come to check us out lol. Satisfied that we were just a bunch of tourists and not stashing a large oyster string on our boat they moved us on.

Tears
Well almost, I got bitten by a large angry trigger fish that snuck up on my while I was photographing soft coral in the shallows of the ‘The windows’ divesite, his shallows apparently. I was very glad I was wearing wetsuit that day! And no I didn’t take his picture, I was too busy trying to smack him with my camera while he menacingly swam at my head – eek! Luckily for me he didn’t break the skin and a got away cleaning with a massive bruise on my knee and the fright of my life.

Topside

While on a trip such as this one you don’t expect there to be much to shoot above the water (well I don’t anyway), however the landscape was so beautiful I just had to get my camera out of that housing once in a while. Stuart gave us a couple of excellent opportunities for tender boat rides around the small islands between diving. The landscape was just so very green and lush. When I looked carefully I saw a fleeting glimpse of a bright green bird and a brilliant pink bird high up in the trees. We stopped for a minute or so on a small beach with a hut, although I don’t think anyone actually lived there. It did give me a change to try my hand at another 360 panorama but when I loaded all 31 NEF files into photoshop to try and stitch it, it unsurprisingly crashed!

With thanks for a great holiday to Alex, Graham, Stuart & the crew of the Seven Seas, Divequest and everyone on the trip.

click on the following to see the full set of images in each galley:
:: Raja Ampat underwater images ::
:: Raja Ampat Mangroves ::
:: Topside ::
:: Mikes Topside photos ::
:: Lembeh Strait underwater images ::

All images in this post are clickable to see larger versions and all images are copyright Suzy Walker or Michael Toye.

First few Raja Ampat photos

Just started uploading some of the photos from Raja Ampat… more to come…

Gallery here: http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/raja_ampat_indonesia_2009

Lembeh Underwater Gallery Complete

I’ve finished uploading some of the weird and wonderful creatures you can see in Lembeh straits, in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Its amazing what the guides find amongst the rubbish in the black volcanic sand! The visibility was not as good as I remember from the previous trip in 2007 but it was certainly great to get back there.

Full gallery here: http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/lembeh_strait_indonesia_2009

This was the first few days of the Ultimate Indonesia photo trip with Divequest, lead by Alex Mustard. I’ve started my above water gallery for the whole trip too, although I’ve only loaded the Lembeh photos so far. The topside photos are in this gallery: http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/lembeh_strait_and_raja_ampat_indonesia_2009

We stayed in the lovely Lembeh Resort which I managed to snag a few photos of this time…

Its under slightly different management than last time but the food and service are still fantastic.

All photos in this post are clickable but do check out the rest Next up Raja Ampat ….

First few Lembeh pics uploaded

Yay, just back from Holidays. We went to Lembeh straits and Raja Ampat in Indonesia.  Just uploaded the first couple of photos from Lembeh Straits, muck diving and macro captial of the world, let me know what you think…

Full gallery here: http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/lembeh_strait_indonesia_2009

Trip review and more photos of course to follow

Caught in the act!

It’s not often that I get to see photos of myself whilst I’m taking photos underwater but Mark Webster sent us some pictures taken of me taking this picture from our recent trip with him!

This is my picture of the Scad fish…

And here are Marks pictures of me!

Many thanks to Mark for these.

Underwater Photo Workshop – The Brothers liveaboard

Well, after one exhausting week back at work I’ve finally got around to writing a little review of our recent trip. It was off to Hurghada, Egypt for a 1 week summer break (booked with oonas divers) aboard the MY Blue Planet 1. Destination: the Brothers! For those of you who haven’t heard of the brothers, they are two small islands in the middle of the Red Sea. They can only be travelled to by liveaboards (much fewer diving boats is always a good thing).

The real appeal of the trip for us was the photo workshop. We’re total Photo-workshop-junkies now, whenever we book a diving trip we try and make it a photo workshop of some sort. It’s not so much that I want to buy photo teaching (although that always comes in handy), what we are actually aiming to buy is piece of mind that the diving will be specifically photo oriented and tailored to the needs of photographers. Although Mike doesn’t actually take photos underwater he’s just as much (if not more) a fair-weather sort of diver. The groups are usually smaller (to accommodate all the huge camera rigs!) and the diving usually a lot more flexible. More time to do your own thing, several dives on the same divesite and a much more relaxed swimming pace No more chasing a manic dive master for 45 minutes nonstop for us!

This workshop was run by Mark Webster. We went on Mark’s trip to Indonesia last year and it was amazing! He’s a really nice relaxed and easy to get on with guy. His wife Suzanna wasn’t with us unfortunately on this trip so there was just the crew of the boat, the dive guide Ashraf, Mark and ten of us. The workshop was very informal. If we had questions Mark was on hand to help. Also, Mark gave a daily presentation on various themes such as wide-angle, macro, wrecks and capturing the character of marine life.

Despite having vowed to never fly on Excel airways again (after the last time) on the flight out we got there 10mins before checkin opened and they were unusually nice to us! We didn’t get charged extra baggage, probably because they didn’t feel the weight of our hand luggage or see how much stuff I’d get stuff into my new photographers jacket! The plane was nice, although we knew in advance that they charge you for *everything*, even water, so we’d stocked up on food & drink before we boarded. We met up with Mark (and a few of the others) at the departure gate. We were actually sitting next to Jeff on the flight out – what are the chances of that!? Anyway, 5hrs passed relatively quickly and we were soon stuffing ourselves into a tiny minivan for the 30 minute ride to the dock. We stayed moored at the dock overnight so we could wait for the Egyptian authorities to give us permission to set sail in the morning.

The first dive was a check dive at Sha’ab El Erg (a.k.a Dolphin reef) unfortunately we didn’t see any dolphins so I was forced to take photos of Mike in his new ‘wing’ !

It was the first time he’d taken it for a spin and he seemed very proud of it.. We originally bought it to save the weight of his stab jacket (BCD) but with all the metal clips and everything on it I think that it was perhaps a rouse to justify the purchase as it only saved perhaps ½ a kilo! Apparently it gives much more freedom of movement around the arms. I think I like to have stuff in my BCD pockets too much to switch though.

The rest of the first two days diving were close to Hurghada at a place called Abu Nuhas. There was no real current and the visibility was quite good. It was all wreck diving though (apart from the night dive which we didn’t do and they saw loads of Spanish dancers – damnit!). I like wrecks but probably not as much as the next man. After two days of wide-angle (shooting with my Tokina 10-17 fisheye in a big dome port) it was quite glad we moved on. Here are some shots I got of the Carnatic and the Ghiannis D:

Having said that I did like the glass fish inside the Carnatic!

We sailed away to the Brothers. As moored up at little brother and I was glad I’d brought my sea sickness pills!

This little guy accosted me as we jumped in the water, two shots and he was off. Just proves it’s a good idea to preset your camera to some sensible settings before jumping in!

I switched to macro but on the promise of possible sharks I switched back again. No sharks though Suzanna saw some, but she fins like a divemaster and I had no chance catch up with that action. I think this is her and Ethan speeding into the distance!

We stayed at little brother one full day (and night) and an early morning dive the next day. In the brothers they never do night dives so it was pretty much 3 dives per day (or less) for the whole trip. The current was much worse than we are used to dealing with at both islands (but that isn’t hard as we don’t really like currently dives at all). Also, diving from a rib with a huge camera is a bit of a game. There was one lovely dive at big brother by the pier, straight off the back of the boat, just me and Mike (everyone else had sped off in the rib to dive the other side of the island). No current, quite shallow, nice and relaxed. Everyone else soon cottoned on that there was a non-currently, photo friendly opportunity and the rib was then undersubscribed in the afternoon.

The last dive day was spent back closer to Hurghada again at Gifton Island & Gotta Abu Ramada. This is back in range of the dive boats (and where the picture at the top of this post was taken). Lovely macro diving though. I filled a whole gallery of just Christmas tree worms! We also saw a great octopus that sat and posed for me (see below).

Also, something I’ve never seen before, schooling puffer fish! The ‘ride of the valkyries’ music popped into my head as soon as I saw them all coming towards me!

As seems to be tradition on photo workshops there was an informal end of week competition, this time we were all asked to submit two underwater photos which would be judged by the crew. Congratulations one again to Valerie for winning with her shot of a cute little Nemo. Here she is taking her trophy.

Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of Valeries winning shot to display.

I was very pleased to be second AND third! Here are my two submitted shot.

All the photos in this post shot above the water were shot by Chefdude with a Canon EOS 1D Mark IIn & EF 85mm f/1.2L, and all shot below the water (unless otherwise stated) are taken yours truly with a Nikon D300 in Subal housing.

The full galleries for this trip are as follows:
Underwater: http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/the_brothers_liveaboard_2008
On the boat: http://www.pbase.com/michael_toye/hurghada_2008

All in all we had a great trip with a lovely bunch of people! Hope you enjoyed this review.

Beginners Luck: Underwater Photo Trip with Nikon D300

We’ve just come back freshly tanned from our trip to Cebu in the Philippines and I thought I’d tell you all about it because we all love to read holiday reviews when its snowing outside at Easter!

I must first say many thanks to Martin and Silvia Edge who organised the trip and ran the photo workshop. Its quite obvious to anyone who has read the 3^rd edition of his book that he will be a great teacher and I can highly recommend both his trips and one day courses (for more details see Martins website http://www.edgeunderwaterphotography.com/). Poor Martin totally had his work cut out with me I can tell you but right from the word go he was there to help. Before we’d even left the country he was helping to making sure my name was top of the queue for the new Subal ND30 housings so I would have one in time. He even found a fault in the very first few housings off the line (but Subal have now caught this and no more should be affected so we need not dwell on it here). I was also very pleased with Ryan Cannon and his team at ReefPhoto for their 1^st class service in getting me kitted out with housing and accessories in time and helping fix the fault.

The Resort & Diving:

The resort (Kasai Village) was nice but with a few things they could do with ironing out (and some which they did during the week). The staff were all very friendly and helpful and I think Silvia Edge did a lot of organising behind the scenes to get things make more convenient to accommodate a big group of photographers with large SLR housings. For example there was one large rinse tank for cameras already available but throughout the trip I noticed a few extra large buckets appear. The same with the camera tables which appeared. The local boat crews were brilliant with us. They remembered whose camera was whose (most of the time) when passing them to us in the water and they were very careful when handling them (including taking off and putting on the lens caps). The diving area was quite spacious with room enough for everyone to hang their kit. And the place was actually quite small which was good because it mean that the rooms were very close to the dive centre!

The food was a buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Very nice food although apparently not much choice for vegetarians. I’m a very fussy eater (don’t eat fish but not veggie) and I managed to find something to eat that I liked most of the time. Unfortunately breakfast was not as early as it could have been for us to make the times of the morning boats so most of the time we ran the boats late.

The diving was all about the photography as expected. Not too currenty (most of the time). You are very much expected to know how to dive and be able to cope with the diving side yourself (after all this is a *photo* workshop). Good buoyancy is essential for good pictures and a healthy regard for the reef is a must. The one finger on a rock technique is encouraged by Martin for stability whilst taking photos. No gloves are allowed (this has been a standard for most places we’ve been thankfully) as it discourages people from touching the reef or handling the marine life. The old adage – “Take only pictures, leave only bubbles” is a good one and employed around the world for a reason. The dives ranged in depth from shallow reef dives at 5 or 6m to deep dives at 30m or more (with the odd deco stop) for dives such as the phantom cave.

I would say the ideal diver considering one of these trips should be confident enough to be able to go off (in a buddy pair of course) and pootle about the reef looking for subjects and taking photos alone. Sometimes we went in a group but it was not really expected that you stay with the group if you saw something you were interested in stopping on. For the boat dives, each buddy pair was expected to have an SMB to deploy so the boat could come and pick them up.

The water was around 28 degrees C most of the time and I was warm enough most of the time in a 3mm full wetsuit (although everyone is different). I was very glad I bought some strong soled booties before we left because it was sometime a long way out to the boats (wading through the water when the tide was out). Shore diving on the house reef was great (after we go over the initial shock of having to trek out so far at low tide) and once we’d got our bearings but finding some interesting areas. The Swedish dive guides were great but it was a shame that they didn’t have any local guides as I think they would have the time to really get to know the house reef and be able to direct guests to the best places.

The Workshop with Martin Edge:

At the beginning of the week I didn’t even know how to open my housing (which is actually more embarrassing than you might think)! Martin instructed me (and others) on how to open/close the housing and gave tips on how the strobe connected and such like. I am planning to write this up soon on my blog here mainly for my own future reference.

The workshop is nice and informal. Both Martin & Silvia are very approachable. His teaching is both one to one (with laptop session opportunities most evenings) and group presentations. The presentations are not pre-set though; they sort of evolve throughout the trip based on the feedback of the group and what people are struggling with. The great thing about this approach is Martin is diving on the same sites at the same time and seeing the same reefs and photo opportunities. You get to see a slice of how he approaches these opportunities and that’s a great learning too in itself. You are encouraged to bring a laptop for downloading and reviewing your pictures as often as possible. I found this very useful as I was able to download the images, see what I’d done wrong and go back to the same site to have another go.

We had a great mix of people there too from complete newbies like me to award winning professional underwater photographers who are still learning new stuff from Martin even after many years. This kind of environment is great because as well as learning from Martin we could learn and be inspired by each other.

I would say that there is nothing much to do here if you’re not diving, unless you like sitting around the pool that is. For the divers with no camera Silvia Edge was on hand with handy tips for a photographer’s model

At the end of the week we were asked to submit 3 photos for an end-of-workshop competition in which they try and round up as many people as possible to vote. As well as the group of us there was also dive centre staff, hotel staff and other guests. The winner got a trophy, a Fish ID book and a hotel dive tee-shirt. And with total beginners luck the winner was…. ME!

Here is my winning entry

And other two entries

Click here for the above water pictures (we strolled into the small nearby village so there isn’t many).

http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/cebu/

Click here for all the under water pictures (we strolled into the small nearby village so there isn’t many).

http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/cebu_underwater