Category Archives: Other

Harlequin or banded snake eel (myrichthys colubrinus)

The harlequin or banded snake eel (Myrichthys colubrinus) is a non-venomous, non-poisonous fish, which mimics a very venomous banded sea krait. Check out the previous post and imagine you are looking at these creatures from a distance away. What do you think? Can they be mixed up?

For the banded eel, the mimicry seems to work well. I found this gal on a reef not too far away from where the photo of the banded sea snake was taken. I used f/14 for a little bit more depth of field and 1/80s to compensate aperture. One flash on a medium-length arm from top slightly left.

When I first saw the eel from a distance I thought that it was a snake. However, when I approached it, I wondered why it was sitting relatively calm on sandy ground. The sea snakes I used to take pictures of, were very active and constantly on the go.

When I took the pictures, it became clear that the eel can easily hang out there forever. It doesn’t need to breathe air like the banded sea krait. So plenty of time to chill out on the reef and become Philippines next top model for interested photographers.

The Perfect Squid

Have you ever tried to take a still photograph of a squid? – I don’t mean the Calamares on the plate of your favorite restaurant for that matter…

If you have tried, you’ll probably agree, that it’s not an easy shot. First of all, squid are nocturnal animals. Second, they are quite fast moving. Worst of all, their moves are random for the casual observer – including myself, since I am not a squid-whisperer.

So how did I get this shot?

Squid
The Perfect Squid

It’s been luck. — “Luck”, you ask? — Yes. I could tell you a story about how I calculated the perfect time and place. But this is blog is about the truth. So here is how this shot was taken:

We dove along a reef on the Philippines. It was a night dive and we were enjoying the whole night-life at the reef (not what some of you might be thinking right now…) It’s really amazing how the fauna changes during night. It feels like diving on a different reef, even if you know the site well during daytime.

Anyhow, I caught a movement at the peripheral angle of my eye. It was this squid. I had to reconfigure my flash setup, since I was on the hunt for ‘small stuff’. For night-dives I am just using the pilot light of my flash as ‘torch’. Nothing else. Scary? Not really. If you are an experienced diver and adventurous – try the following at own risk: Turn off all lights when you are in a safe spot (i.e. sandy ground right below you and no other hazards around). Then move your hands gently – or just look into the dark.

Since I didn’t have any red-light/-filter mounted on the pilot,  the tricky part was to not scare the squid away by putting too much light on it. On the other hand – somehow the autofocus needed to work. So it probably looked quite funny, when I moved towards the squid, putting it into the light-beam, then retracting, checking the picture just taken, slightly re-configuring, moving forward again.

Don’t think you can do this forever with a squid though. First of all – these creatures are usually quite shy and don’t like light. Secondly. you’ll find it very hard to put focus on the squid – I promise. Last, but not least, they are gone at any slight disturbance.

If you want to share your squid photo-experience – comment on this page!

How did I get this near-perfect black background? Three things: First, I used f/14 – at night (!) – to provide enough depth of field to get the whole squid in focus plus allow for some ‘additional range’. Second, I put 1/100 sec, which honestly was at the limit of the squid’s movement speed – and I used ISO 200. Admittedly, I could have used a higher ISO rating, but at the speed of the scene – switching gear back-and-forth, I left the ISO where it was and rather focused on getting the shot.

Thirdly? Yes, here is the last ingredient of the secret sauce… Thirdly I retouched the background using Lightroom. There was simply too much sediment in the Philippine sea to not-be-captured using significant flash power for this night-shot. — I hardly use heavy background retouch, but for aesthetic reasons, I chose to do so on this picture.

Equipment used? DSLR full-frame, 100mm macro, 1 flash on medium-length arm.

Did it work out? What do you think?

Lockheed P38 Lightning fighter wreck near St. Cyr-sur-Mer

Here is another shot which I took during Kurt Amsler’s photo workshop in June. This Lockheed P38 Lightning wreck is located pretty close to St. Cyr-sur-Mer at 38m depth.

P38 Fighter Wreck

Two tricky things with this shot: (a) at 38m of depth you don’t have much bottom time and the brain admittedly works a little bit slower than on the surface, so everything needed to be preconfigured before jumping into the water. (b) Due to the positioning of the wreck and time of day, we needed to shoot against the rising sun.

Hence I chose ISO 800, which is higher than I’d usually go for – for a number of reasons:

  • to compensate reduced light at this depth
  • to be able to shoot with faster shutter speed and
  • to use less flash-power in order to reduce haze of suspended particles

In addition I set the camera to f/13 to have well enough depth of field and a 1/200 shutter speed to get the sun under control.

Two 150Ws flashes were used at 1/4 power. Both were positioned vertically above the fisheye-lens to get as much room as possible between the flashes and the light sediment haze on the sandy floor.

It was a fantastic dive and photo experience.

Meet the unknown (probably a thaliacea)

Welcome back! Today’s picture is a creature, which I couldn’t classify. I think it might be a thaliacea, but not sure.

thaliacea
thaliacea

The picture was taken on a sunny day on beautiful Bali. In order to get the contrast of the blueish creature against the background, I used f/13 with 1/100 sec and one flash to make the background black.

The trickier part for pictures of these creatures is getting the focus right. They are translucent and blur well with the blue background. So many cameras have problems using the autofocus and they tend to continuously ‘zoom-in-and-out’.

I usually try to catch and hold the camera’s autofocus by pressing the button just half way down, focusing on the area with highest contrast, then position the frame and by moving slightly forward or backward, positing the sharpness on the creature again.

Hand-tame Mantis Shrimp (Stomatopoda)

OMG!!! A photo with mantis shrimp in your hand??? You can’t touch a mantis shrimp!!! — You’ll be expelled from CMAS, stigmatized by PADI and no other diving association shall give you shelter never, ever in future again!!! — Interested about the background information for this shot? – Read on!

As regular reader of this blog, you have probably already figured out that this is another shot taken on the Philippines. Traditionally fishing is a way of making a living for a large part of the population. And of course, this involves fishing with nets in some areas, which are setup on top of the reef at lengths between 50 to 200 meters to catch reef fish.

Nets and reefs don’t go too well with each other. More often than not, parts of the nets wrap around the hard corals and when the nets are removed, parts stay on the reef creating a permanent deadly trap for a lot of creatures.

Ylfa and I happened to come along such an abandoned net, where we found these two beautiful mantis shrimp entangled in  it. There was no question, we were going to help these animals, even though they are known to be “thumb splitters” due to their ability to cause painful gashes if not handled cautiously.

I can tell you – these two guys seem to feel that they are being helped rather than being threatened. Both of them did not move at all, while Ylfa cut them loose taking special care not to harm their eyes, which where surrounded by the net’s strings.

After cutting them loose, we took the pictures on top of the page, putting the shrimps gently back onto the corals. They seemed to take a “deep breath” as they stayed on top of the coral for about five minutes. Then they quickly moved and disappeared in the crevices of the reef.

Of course we removed the net from the reef and took it back ashore.

Bulubituon – Bituon Tree or Fish Poison Tree (Barringtonia asiatica)

Each tree’s flower of the Bituon Tree opens just for one night. It starts to open after sunset and falls off in the morning hours. Read more on wikipedia.

– Amazing beauty for just one night.

Wonder about the story behind the photo? Here we go:

My wife and I knew that there were several Bituon trees around in the Pintuyan Dive Resort, Philippines – and we wanted to see one of these marvelous blossoms unfold.  My SLR camera was already mounted in the underwater housing ready for diving the next day. So we decided to test the mobile phone camera of Ylfa. The built-in flash didn’t provide the ‘feel’ we wanted for the photo. So I used one of our UW torches to spot-illuminate while Ylfa took the pictures with her cell phone. We returned about every half hour to the tree to document progress and within 2-3 hours the series was completed.

Needless to say – Ylfa is passionate about high quality photo-sensors and lenses in cell phones.