Go Speed Racer, Go!
Life in the Slow Lane
Fast forward from my last Alaska photo, the year is now 2008 and I returned to cruise the inside passage. The boat now has five more years of experience in finding the best spots, though this shot was from an "exploratory" dive site. The site: Patterson Point on Baranof Island. Hey, who knows, maybe some distant relative was a great Alaskan explorer!
We dropped down for our first dive and immediately I was having technical difficulties. I wound up surfacing, climbing aboard the skiff, and discovering my lens wasn't engaged with the camera completely. Doh!
After solving this little hold-up, I jumped back into the 41 degree water and proceeded to blind slugs and fish with my strobes.
A common habit of macro shooting underwater is moving at a slow pace, finding something interesting, and shooting the heck out of it before moving on. Sometimes, I don't travel more than 50 feet on dives when shooting macro. It's definitely "life in the slow lane".
Cruising along, I noticed a couple taking photos of an unusually large nudibranch. From twenty feet away, I could tell what it was. Impressive indeed!
Now this is where the title comes into play. A dive instructor I knew always talked about a how a good nudibranch shot was like a sports car...comin' right at you with a sense of motion. Think the cover of Car & Driver magazine with a Ferrari or Porsche bearing down at you.
And if you know what a nudibranch is, then you know they are slow, and really don't have much in common with sports cars. They are a slug, afterall, and life tends to be a bit slower underwater anyway.
This is my second favorite version of this slug. The first is here.
Nikon D200
Nikkor 105mm AF-D
1/125sec @ f14, ISO 100
Aquatica A200 Housing, Glass Flat Port
Sea & Sea YS-90DX and YS-110 strobes on manual power
Go Speed Racer, Go!
Life in the Slow Lane
Fast forward from my last Alaska photo, the year is now 2008 and I returned to cruise the inside passage. The boat now has five more years of experience in finding the best spots, though this shot was from an "exploratory" dive site. The site: Patterson Point on Baranof Island. Hey, who knows, maybe some distant relative was a great Alaskan explorer!
We dropped down for our first dive and immediately I was having technical difficulties. I wound up surfacing, climbing aboard the skiff, and discovering my lens wasn't engaged with the camera completely. Doh!
After solving this little hold-up, I jumped back into the 41 degree water and proceeded to blind slugs and fish with my strobes.
A common habit of macro shooting underwater is moving at a slow pace, finding something interesting, and shooting the heck out of it before moving on. Sometimes, I don't travel more than 50 feet on dives when shooting macro. It's definitely "life in the slow lane".
Cruising along, I noticed a couple taking photos of an unusually large nudibranch. From twenty feet away, I could tell what it was. Impressive indeed!
Now this is where the title comes into play. A dive instructor I knew always talked about a how a good nudibranch shot was like a sports car...comin' right at you with a sense of motion. Think the cover of Car & Driver magazine with a Ferrari or Porsche bearing down at you.
And if you know what a nudibranch is, then you know they are slow, and really don't have much in common with sports cars. They are a slug, afterall, and life tends to be a bit slower underwater anyway.
This is my second favorite version of this slug. The first is here.
Nikon D200
Nikkor 105mm AF-D
1/125sec @ f14, ISO 100
Aquatica A200 Housing, Glass Flat Port
Sea & Sea YS-90DX and YS-110 strobes on manual power