Tony Wu's Underwater Photography Blog

Archive for June, 2009

Squid Orgy

Mon, Jun 29th, 2009 | Marine Life, Places, Adventures 10 Comments

I just got back from a quick trip to the Izu Peninsula in Japan. My primary objective was to photograph aggregations of mating bigfin reef squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana).

Despite having horrific weather for most of the days, coming down with a high fever mid-dive and becoming half-delirious, plus dealing with teething problems involving a new camera and housing…I managed to some nice shots.

It’ll take me a few days, but I’ll write more about the amazing and somewhat eerie experience of being surrounded by dozens of large squid (a metre+ in length for the biggest ones) preoccupied with mating and laying eggs.

Here’s a preview:

squid

Incidentally, can anyone clue me in on what the correct term for a “bunch of squid” is? Like…school of fish, herd of elephants, pride of lions, gaggle of geese, etc.

Small World

Wed, Jun 24th, 2009 | Musings 8 Comments

Not too long ago, when I met people during my travels, I made friends, shared a few experiences, and quite likely never saw or heard from them again.

The internet has changed all that, lowering the cost and barriers to communication, so that it’s much easier these days to keep in touch.

For instance, I received this photo via email from Pat, whom I met in Lembeh a couple of years ago at Kasawari Lembeh Resort.

She and her husband are in their 70s and are going strong…travelling the world for diving and other activities. At the resort, they were fun, enthusiastic about every fish and other animal we stumbled across, and just filled with postive energy.

In fact, they left a lasting impression upon me, reminding me of how fortunate I am, and how valuable every moment and experience is.

Pat

Anyway, Pat (in the photo) is holding up a copy of my book Silent Symphony, which she and her husband were kind enough to donate to the Hardesty Regional Library in Tulsa, Oklahama.

So if you’re anywhere near Tulsa and want to take a look at my book, you know where to go!

Thanks Pat and Bob…for donating the book, and for being an inspiration.

How I Tricked A Sea Lion

Sat, Jun 20th, 2009 | Funny Stuff, Marine Life 111 Comments

In the process of looking through images for an article, I came across this photograph, which I haven’t posted or published before. It’s an Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea) that I met last year.

sea lion

If you’re concerned about the fish-in-distress, don’t worry…it survived. Here’s the story:

While we were playing together, the sea lion dashed off and zig-zagged around the seabed, occasionally “looking over its shoulder”, so to speak, indicating for me to tag along.

Actually, we had been cavorting in the shallows for the better part of an hour by that point, so the sea lion most likely knew I would do my best to keep up, but it sure seemed like he turned back to check on me a few times.

After zipping around for a bit, he slammed on the brakes, shoved his face into a pile of seaweed, executed a pinpoint 180º turn and presented me with a fish…taking obvious pride in his find. I took a few photos, then indicated as best that I could that I didn’t need a snack, and I wasn’t particularly interested in holding the fish in my mouth.

He must have understood, because he let the fish go and looked at me with a puzzled, somewhat insulted, expression, as if asking: “What is wrong with you?”.

Meanwhile, the poor little fish tried to swim (actually…limp) away, but the sea lion would have none of it. He executed a quick flourish and re-captured it, once again presenting the despondent fish to me.

Once again, I deferred.

Once again, he questioned my sanity…as the fish made a desperate, but hopeless, dash for freedom.

Once again, he snagged the (now thoroughly exhausted) fish and offered it to me.

And yes…once again…I indicated “No, I am absolutely not going to chew on the fish, no matter how pretty it is.” this time, doing a flourish of my own accentuated by a couple of flips in the water…as an attempt to distract the persistent pinniped.

Fortunately for the fish, my little ruse worked. The ever-curious sea lion spit out the (now completely panicked, hyperventilating) fish, and swam over to check out why I was doing flips in the water.

…then, there was a “Wait a second…” moment (picture light bulb over Elmer Fudd’s head), when the sea lion looked at me, looked back at where he’d left the fish, and realised that he’d just been duped.

In far less than the blink of an eye, he was back to where his catch had been, but by then, the little fish had managed to disappear into a morass of seaweed.

The sea lion made a complete mess of the seaweed in an attempt to relocate his prey/ toy, but in the end, he stopped looking and gave me the cold shoulder..until of course, I did a few more flips in the water and he zipped right over to play again.

The point of the story? Somewhere out there is a fish that owes me.

iFrustration

Thu, Jun 18th, 2009 | Musings 2 Comments

I’ve been a loyal Apple fan since my first Apple II way back when, even sticking with Apple during the tough times when Steve wasn’t around.

It’s been a frustrating few months though.

This morning, I spent a couple of hours troubleshooting what should have been a simple upgrade to OS 3.0 for my iPhone. I went through the download process, and this is what I got:

iphone fail

Of course I had a SIM in the phone, and there is no SIM PIN, but my iPhone screen just locked up, displaying a USB cable symbol and, for some inexplicable reason, flashing messages in French.

It took me six cycles of shutting everything down and restarting everything to get the new OS to work, and then I had to do a complete restore. Everything works fine now, so I’m pacified for the time being.

It seems like a lot of other people have experienced similar FAILs with the iPhone 3.0 software upgrade.

This follows on my experience of wasting four to five hours resolving software conflicts when I upgraded to Safari 4.0 recently, and the 18 to 24 hours it took me to troubleshoot someone else’s iPod Touch, which wouldn’t sync with iTunes (In that instance, I again had to find help from other users on the Apple support forum experiencing the same problem, because the people in the Apple Genius Bar couldn’t resolve the issue).

Plus, it seems like it took Apple far too long to address a major Java security flaw, which everyone including Apple seemed to know about for months.

I remain an Apple fan, but I certainly hope my iFrustration with Apple software of late isn’t a byproduct of the company’s success over the past few years.

MarineLife Keywords List

Mon, Jun 15th, 2009 | Equipment, Technique 19 Comments

Keywording is a necessary, but pain-in-the-rear, task. If you don’t know what keywording is, you need to.

By way of background…one of the biggest challenges that comes with digital photography is keeping track of and organising your files. With digital media and storage being so readily available and inexpensive, most people with digital cameras take lots and lots of photos…a lot more than they would have with film.

For argument’s sake, let’s say you take three big dive trips a year, during which you take 3,000 photos. Add to that several thousand photographs of friends, family and such, and by the end of a typical 12-month period, you literally have thousands of images.

At some point after several years, say you want to find one specific photo…a particularly stunning image of a lionfish that you want to enter into a photo contest.

How do you find it?

Even assuming that you’ve kept all your images in some reasonably organised format (a big assumption!), you’d still need to look through thousands of photos…a time-consuming, painstaking process…and you and/ or your computer might give up before you find the correct image.

Fortunately, there is a solution for this common dilemma…keywording.

So how does this apply to you?

First of all, if you’re not already doing so, you should use either Lightroom or Aperture.

Both of these software packages give you the ability to preview your images quickly (really important given ever-increasing file sizes), edit/ modify them to some degree, and more importantly…keep them organised.

Think of them like the card catalogue at the library. If you’re looking for a specific book or books about a particular topic, you look for “key words” in the card catalogue.

Books about underwater photography, for instance, might be listed under “marine”, “photography”, “underwater photography”, “colossal waste of time and money”, and so forth.

The card catalogue acts as an index of such key words, allowing you to sort through thousands, sometimes millions, of titles to narrow down your choices to those most relevant to your objective.

Or…a more contemporary idiom might be using a search engine. If you look for underwater photography books using Google, the same concept applies. You’d enter key words like the ones above, and Google would hopefully return useful results…from the billions of web pages Google has indexed.

Bottom line…key words help you make sense of an overabundance of information.

Similarly, in Lightroom and Aperture, if you apply key words to your images, then later, it’ll be a lot easier to find specific photos.

The actual process of keywording in these software packages isn’t difficult. Just click on the metadata section and type in your key words. Later, you can use the search fields to find your photo.

For instance, with the example above, if I’ve keyworded properly, all I’d need to do is type “lionfish” into my search field in Aperture, and all the images I’ve labeled with the key word “lionfish” will pop up…meaning I don’t need to sort through pictures of cardinalfish, anemonefish, my dive buddy’s rear end, etc.

Keywording isn’t hard by any means, but it can be a royal pain, especially if you dive in Asian waters teeming with marine life. After a single dive, you might need to apply key words for 10, 20, 30 or more species…looking each one up in guide books, and trying to spell each name correctly. Repeat for three dives a day…and you’ve got no time to enjoy your trip!

There’s help available now, at least for marine photographers, in the form of a pre-packaged list of key words for marine life that covers the genus and species of over 4,000 fish, 4,000 invertebrates, and all known marine turtles, rays, skates, sharks, marine reptiles and marine mammals…basically, just about everything you’re likely to encounter.

aperture

What this means is that once you’ve identified your subject (No…unfortunately the keyword list cannot ID marine life for you!), you can literally drag-and-drop all the relevant keywords onto your file(s), saving you the time and hassle of typing, and also ensuring consistency.

I use Aperture, and I have my own keywording system that I’ve developed (“cobbled together” is probably more accurate), so when I was testing a review copy of the keywords, my primary concern was ensuring that the MarineLife Keywords list didn’t wipe out my own system.

It didn’t.

After importing the MarineLife Keywords into Aperture, I had all of my original key words available to me, as well as the new ones…which means my old filing system is intact, and I can gradually start to integrate the new one.

There’s one other feature I really like about the MarineLife Keyword list. One of things that really irritates me is when people capitalise common names of marine life…typing something like: “I saw lots of Lionfish and Giant Frogfish after photographing Spotted Eagle Rays.”

Common names should not be capitalised. Period.

The MarineLife Keywords list does not capitalise common names (unless there is a proper name involved) and the genus and species names are properly formatted, with the genus name capitalised and the species name not. Simple formatting issue, but it shows attention to detail and knowledge of proper convention.

If you’re wondering what the key words actually look like, let me give you one example. Say I wanted to apply key words to this photo of a flamboyant cuttlefish I took in Ambon.

flamboyant cuttlefish

All I do is type “flamboyant” into the search field in Aperture’s key word heads-up display, and the MarineLife Keywords database gives me:

Marine Life, Invertebrates, Mollusks: Mollusca, Cephalopods: Cephalopoda, Cuttlefish: Sepiida, Sepiidae, flamboyant cuttlefish: Metasepia pfefferi

…in other words, everything I’d need to find this photo (and others like it) again later.

Of course, the MarineLife Keywords database isn’t meant to anticipate every key word you’ll ever need…just the taxonomic ones.

For this photo, for instance, I’d add my own additional key words of: Air Manis, Ambon, Indonesia…to keep track of where I took the photo.

So to wrap up, if you take a lot of photos and need a good filing system…use Aperture or Lightroom, and get the MarineLife Keywords list to make keywording quicker and easier.

You can see more details on the MarineLife Keywords website. The MarineLife Keywords database costs $99, but you can get a $5 discount by using the discount code I692W094 upon checkout.

If you’re not already familiar with keywording, be sure to watch the demo video on the site that Eric Cheng put together.

Take Control

Sun, Jun 14th, 2009 | Equipment, Technique No Comments

It just occurred to me that the dinosaur exhibit I went to recently provides a convenient backdrop for making a photographic point…specifically, that if you want to take nice pictures, you should really learn how to control exposure manually.

For the sake of illustration, let’s compare a couple of images. First, here’s a photo of the trio of Mapusauruses on display (with a veggiesaurus of some sort in the background), taken with a Sony DSC-W300 compact digital camera set on P mode (automatic everything):

dinosaurs

Acceptable, but nothing special, right?

Compare it with the photo below, which I took with the exact same DSC-W300, in the exact same building, with the exact same dinosaurs, with the exact same ambient light:

dinosaurs

Much more dramatic, wouldn’t you agree?

Besides shifting position to crop out and conceal some of the distracting bits in the background, I switched to Manual mode, then reduced the overall exposure level by about 1.7 stops.

The net effect? I eliminated a lot of the un-necessary visual clutter, like the grating on the ceiling, the detail in the background concrete, the detail in the people in the foreground, etc., making you see what I wanted you to see…a trio of menacing beasts towering over curious onlookers.

I was also lucky…gaining the unanticipated bonus of having strong light fall on the people on the far side of the podium leaning over to read something…perfect for showing scale.

In the first picture, the camera did exactly what it was supposed to do…adjust settings to give as neutral an exposure as possible. That’s the way cameras are programmed, so that’s what you get if you let the camera decide everything.

In the second picture, I basically executed a manual over-ride, and told the camera that I wanted to create an image that’s darker than an average exposure…in order to hide the unsightly bits and bobs, while accentuating the cool stuff with hooked claws and sharp teeth (how’s that for technical-speak?).

The take-away message is that if your camera has manual controls, learn to use them. I’m not talking just about expensive DSLRs. The camera I used for the photos here is a compact that I carried in my pocket (I was too lazy to lug a bigger camera across town).

When your pictures don’t turn out the way you want (underwater or on land), it’s tempting to blame your camera…but keep in mind that quite often, just fiddling with a few settings will make a big difference.

Walking with Dinosaurs

Sat, Jun 13th, 2009 | Musings 2 Comments

It seems like this was my week to see old stuff…expensive fossils on Monday, and yesterday, a dinosaur exhibit at the National Museum of Nature and Science Tokyo.

This will probably come as no surprise, but I was obsessed with dinosaurs and other prehistoric life forms when I was a kid. I devoured every dinosaur book in every library and bookstore that I came across, and I probably spent hundreds of hours digging through gravel, mountain rocks, river beds, construction sites, etc. for fossils. (I found a lot!)

I drew dinosaurs at school (usually during reading and grammar classes), and dreamed up all sorts of little projects to pursue in lieu of doing homework. When I visited Washington DC…straight to the dinosaur exhibit.

…so seeing the dino displays at the museum yesterday brought back a flood of fond memories.

The were a number of dinosaurs on display. True to form, I gravitated to the ones with big teeth and sharp claws, giving only a casual glance to the duck-like, pacifist “veggisaursuses”.

The one at the top of this post was the first to greet visitors to the hall. It’s a Cryolophosaurus ellioti (can you hear me saying “cooooooolllllllll” as I walked in?).

And the ones below are a pack of Mapusaurus roseae. We listened to a brief talk by one of the researchers, who explained how our interpretation of these dinosaurs has changed over the past couple of decades.

dinosaur

He wasn’t a great speaker, but he showed some illustrations from textbooks in the late 80s and early 90s that made these guys look like uncoordinated, dopey Barneys…which underscored just how off-the-mark researchers were only a few years ago, and how “accepted truth” at any given time can look really stupid with the passage of a little time.

We now view these and other similar dinosaurs as intelligent, agile, bad-a** pack-hunters…something probably much closer to what they were really like.

There were many other dinosaurs on display, including some flying reptiles that looked like they couldn’t possibly walk, much less take to the air, but these guys with the big teeth were the stars of the show…the ones that left me saying “cooooollllllll” all the way back home.

Time is Money

Tue, Jun 9th, 2009 | Musings 1 Comment

On a whim, I went to a mineralogy exhibition in Tokyo yesterday, because a friend visited the show over the weekend and mentioned that there were a lot of fossils of marine animals on display (and also because I needed a break from the computer screen).

Sure enough, there were trilobites, crabs, fish, shark teeth, crinoids, ammonites, marine reptiles, cetaceans…and lots of other stuff. Way cool.

Out of all the awesome things on display, my eye went to a fossil of what looked to be a ray. “Hmmm…this looks interesting.” I thought to myself. Rays are soft-bodied animals, meaning they don’t have bones like we do. As a result, there are probably relatively few fossils of rays around.

I considered lugging the big rock back…until I saw the price…around US$10,000 at current exchange rates!

fossil

Article: The Photographic Eye

Tue, Jun 9th, 2009 | Articles, Equipment, Technique 2 Comments

goby Here’s another instalment (756kB PDF file) of The Photographic Eye column from Wetpixel Quarterly.

The subject of this particular column is the preparation that went into taking a super close-up photo of a yawning goby in mid-water…not preparation as in setting up of equipment, but preparation in the context of acquiring the equipment, knowledge and skills to nail the shot.

There are a lot of references to Star Wars…so in advance…yes, I’m a Sci-Fi geek.

Nuance

Mon, Jun 8th, 2009 | Equipment, Technique, Marine Life, Places, Adventures 4 Comments

Nuance (/nyooonss/): noun a subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, colour, etc. (via AskOxford.com)

…and perhaps one of the least discussed, under-rated concepts in underwater photography.

As I’ve alluded to previously, everyone taking underwater photographs these days, whether for fun or for work, faces an interesting conundrum. The arrival of digital technology means that an increasing number of people are taking photos underwater, which naturally results in a growing number of photographs.

Moreover, the arrival of photo-sharing sites and such on the internet means that a good proportion of those photos are uploaded every day, and an ever-growing proportion of dedicated divers around the world see those photos.

On the one hand, this democratisation of underwater photography is absolutely fantastic; and yet, on the other, it gives rise to a dilemma…how do you make your photographs stand out from the flood of digital images created every day?

Of course, this isn’t a new issue, but the sheer number of great images being created and uploaded each day from all around the world means that the need to understand and respond to such changes has become increasingly acute.

In this context, nuance is an invaluable concept. More specifically…taking photographs of the same things as everyone else, perhaps even the same exact subject…but doing it with just a sprinkle of originality…enough to make your images look different from the hundreds or even thousands of images of the same subject.

To illustrate, this is an image of a pair of Coleman shrimp (Periclimenes colemani) on a fire urchin at the Laha II dive site in Ambon:

coleman shrimp

It’s not a bad picture (setting aside for a moment the fact that the big one has a visually distracting deformity), but then again, if you do a quick Google seach on the term “coleman shrimp”, you’ll get several hundred thousand results. Not all will have images, but many will…and many will have images that are similar to, if not nearly identical to, this one.

If you visit Ambon and dive Laha II, you’ll find Coleman shrimp on every dive, unless you’re completely blind or totally out of luck. They’re all over the place. Faced with this situation, many people, after taking an obligatory number of snapshots, never give the shrimp another look.

But actually, Laha II is one of the best places for applying nuance to these colourful crustaceans…simply because there are so many of them in relatively easy diving conditions.

The following photo, for instance, isn’t radically different from the one above, but it’s just different enough to perhaps stand out if there were a bunch of Coleman shrimp photos lined up side-by-side.

coleman shrimp

Why?

Besides having prettier, non-deformed shrimp, as the photographic subject, there’s a subtle change in mood, deriving from a shallower depth of field than people normally apply to this subject, along with a subtle difference in light.

The light hits the shrimp in the foreground, making it stand out from the relatively darker background, but then falls off rapidly, leaving the shrimp in the background slightly underexposed. There’s enough light so you know there’s a second shrimp there, but not enough to feel the need to see every detail.

A slight change in angle works in this instance too, by complementing the nuance in depth of field and lighting, i.e., they work well together.

Mini Me

Sat, Jun 6th, 2009 | Marine Life, Places, Adventures 4 Comments

This is perhaps the smallest frogfish that I’ve ever come across, or at least that I’ve ever noticed.

While I was in Ambon, my dive guide Toby showed me this little fish, which was sitting among the peach-fuzz-like stuff covering a small rock while doing its best impression of…peach fuzz on a rock.

“Mini me” was about the size of a grain of rice, perhaps a little bit bigger.

It was perfectly camouflaged, and the light levels were low with a ripping current. I have no idea what species this frogfish is. I just know I had to squint a lot to see it.

frogfish

Update 08 June: Margaret Thompson sent me the image below of a tiny orange frogfish she photographed in Lembeh. Unlike me, she was smart and had a pointer next to the fish for scale. Cute, no?

Thanks Margaret!

frogfish

Somewhat Disturbing

Mon, Jun 1st, 2009 | Musings 6 Comments

I had a somewhat disturbing experience on my flight from Bangkok to Singapore recently.

On SQ flight 632 from Bangkok to Tokyo on 30 May, the plane was hit by some strong turbulence not too long into the flight.

I fly a lot(!), so a bit of turbulence doesn’t bother me, but this was stronger than usual, and it hit suddenly. There was no gradual build-up. It was more of a “Baam!”, like the plane being slapped by an angry giant, followed by lots of rockin’ and rollin’.

Then, it stopped as suddenly as it had started.

Of course, the “fasten your seat belts” sign came on, followed by the usual announcement about suspending cabin services. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

The disturbing part came after the turbulence past. One of the pilots got on the intercom and apologised for the turbulence, saying that it had been due to the wake from a passing aircraft.

Ok…so it was late at night, and I was sleepy and groggy, but this got my attention. Wake?! Passing aircraft?! Say what?!

There was no alarm in his voice. He said it in a nonchalant, matter-of-fact manner, almost as if he had just announced the commencement of inflight sales.

But…what made it even worse was the Japanese announcement that followed. The Japanese version of the announcement was just the usual…”We’re passing through an area of turbulence and the captain anticipates possible further turbulence so please keep your seat belts fastened.”

No hint of proximate planes and their ensuing wakes.

So…hang on a second. Which version was it?

I probably should’ve asked and probably should’ve pushed the point, but I didn’t…figuring that if we had just had a near miss, there was nothing that could be done about it at that point, and if it was just normal turbulence, then hopefully the guy who just hinted at a close-quarters fly-by knew what he was doing and wasn’t just screwing with us.

Oddly enough, everyone else seemed oblivious to the announcements, whether in English or in Japanese. It’s as close as I’ve ever come to feeling like I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Hope I never hear that type of announcement again.