This is a PDF copy (380kB) of an interview in the most recent issue of Amateur Photographer magazine in the UK, written by Jade Lord.
She did a particularly good job of distilling some sense out of my rambling and making me seem (somewhat) respectable.
Check out more content in the magazine.
The 2009 humpback whale season is wrapping up for me. I’m on the way to the airport shortly.
My last day on the water was a difficult one, with blistering winds and three- to four-metre swells in some areas. But…we found calf number 25, so it was worthwhile.
We named the calf Nofo, which carries two meanings. Nofo is one of our best friends here, and Nofo’a means “good bye” in Tongan.
It’ll take me some time to write up my Week 5 summary, as I’ll be in transit for the next few days.
Meanwhile, here’s a photo of me with the film crew from RTHK. I was doing my best to act naturally…but the big fuzzy thing sneaking up on me made me a bit nervous.
This is an interview that appeared in DIVE Magazine in the UK recently. The main topic is an encounter I had with a juvenile sperm whale some years ago, one which left an indelible mark on me, fortunately in a good way.
Sperm whales are the largest carnivores on the planet. They have cavernous mouths with big, big teeth. I got a close-up look at both the mouth and the teeth, as Colin Doeg describes in the article (304kB).
Just reading the text, you might get the impression that I was calm, cool and collected. In reality, with an 11-metre predator literally on my fins, I was pissing in my wetsuit (to put it in an understated, PG-rated manner).
This version is from DIVE Magazine’s website.
I’m back. Physically at least. Since getting off the plane late Saturday night, I’ve been buried under a mountain of emails, phone calls, to-do list items, dog walks, etc. It’s always like this, but sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth re-entering the real world. And it doesn’t really help when I get emails from PNG saying “The waters are frickin’ amazing now. You should’ve stayed longer!” Sigh.
Anyway, I’m nearly through the first wave of stuff and will hopefully get time soon to pull my notes together to put together a summary of the trip. In short, it was terrific. PNG was hit by some less-than-desirable weather, but the passengers on the MV Golden Dawn liveaboard trip were truly fantastic, among the best bunch of people I’ve ever had the pleasure of being stuck on a boat with, and my stay at Loloata was filled with interesting experiences, as always.
My apologies to everyone who sent me emails, greeting cards, e-greetings, etc., over the holidays. I tried to reply to all the e-greetings, but most likely missed a few inadvertently, and one person I responded to found my response in his spam folder, so please check your spam folder. I replied. Honestly!
While I was away, I had quite a few articles published. First are a Perspective column (108 kB) entitled Pondering Plastics and a destination feature about Tonga (1.7 MB) for FiNS Magazine. These two articles are available via my iTunes podcast too.
For Japanese readers, I also had two articles published in Web-lue, one about Papua New Guinea (3.2 MB), and the other about Tonga (2.1 MB).
And finally, my face-on, full-frame photo of a sperm whale with its mouth wide open is featured in the Big Shot column of the most recent issue of DIVE magazine in the UK, though I don’t have a physical or e-copy yet.
…back to work
An interview that appeared in the 27 September 2007 issue of The New Paper in Singapore. A friend who read it wrote me to say: “It makes you sound almost respectable.” How dare they do that?!
This is an special photography feature and interview in the recent issue of FiNS Magazine, with me and a handful of fellow underwater photographers.
Most interview questions I get from magazines are mind-numbingly dry, dull and unimaginative: “Where is your favourite place to dive?”, “What kind of camera do you use?”, “What is your favourite animal?”, “Have you ever swum with sharks?”, etc. Truth be told, it’s nigh impossible to gather up the motivation to answer questions like that time and again.
Aey and Mean at FiNS came up with an entirely unique, if not oddball, set of questions which were actually a lot of fun to answer. Even more fun was reading everyone else’s answers, and seeing that at least one thing…a great (if warped) sense of humour…binds us all together.
Right click here to download the PDF file (2 MB…It’s a big file packed with lots of nice images).
The PDF file is also available as a download from my iTunes podcast.
This is an interview I did with a magazine called Nautica in Croatia. How cool is that?!
I don’t know how many people reading this will understand Croatian, but I had to post this anyway. Upon seeing this, one smart a** I know said, “I understand as much as I normally do of your articles.” Hah, hah. Very amusing.
Right click here to download the PDF file (232 kB). There were actually more pages just with photos, but this is the cool part with my answers in Croatian.
And by the way, there is apparently good diving in Croatia. Maybe that’s where I have to visit next…
I recently appeared in a newspaper advertisement in Singapore for Canon.
Read the rest of this entry »
