So you don’t think that everything in Lembeh is alien, strange and/ or somewhat grotesque…here’s a photo of a cute little nudibranch, slightly less than 2cm long, sitting pretty on a perch it chose at a site called Tanda Rusa.
Fortunately, this small sea slug wasn’t moving at all, so I had plenty of time to get the lighting just right. I’m probably sounding like a broken record at this stage, but lighting is so incredibly important.
If I had blasted this nudibranch from the front with two strobes as is the norm in underwater photography, it wouldn’t have changed how cute the subject is, but it would’ve totally altered the mood.
Given how small everything is in this image, the light would’ve overwhelmed the background and everything would’ve been lit up. Not necessarily bad, but the photo wouldn’t have conveyed the “perched alone on a mountain top” impression I wanted.
Achieving this required two Inon Z220 strobes, a Sea & Sea YS20 strobe from film days, a diopter made by Pro One, some electrician’s tape, and a lot of squinting. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
This is the type of stuff we’ll be discussing after the Scubacam group gets here later today (assuming they want to hear it!).
