Photo taken in Menjangan, Bali at POS 2 dive site, 23 metres, by my friend Takashi Nagamatsu, who owns underwater camera shop Aquaforum in Japan.

Wish I had been there to see this!

The army-green bag on the left caught my eye when I was in Tonga earlier this year (a few friends from Japan had the bag). The bag is made of canvas, which is written as 帆布 in Japanese, and pronounced “hanpu”. The writing on the green bag (which you can’t read from this photo), says 帆布バッグ, which is pronounced “hanpu bag”…which sounds almost exactly like the way you’d pronounce the word “humpback” in Japanese. In other words, nearly the same pronunciation for “canvas bag” as “humpback whale”, for a bag that has a humpback whale on it.

The cuteness and cleverness of this probably loses something in translation, but it’s a terrific example of aligning concept, design, form and function.

The blue bag on the right has an adorable drawing of a sperm whale, which is another of my all-time favourite animals.

At 17.1 metres in length, the skeleton is enormous. It’s from a 67.2-tonne male that was caught in 1961 near Kodiak Island, Alaska as part of the International Whaling Commission’s activities. Whether I was standing beside the skeleton, in front of it, underneath it…anywhere…the sheer bulk was overwhelming and awe-inspiring. It’s difficult to convey just how humbling the experience was.

Of course, the sad part of the experience is knowing that northern pacific right whales are in a bad way. Depending on which estimates you refer to, there are an estimated 300 to 500 of these animals alive today…not exactly a booming population. In fact, the whales are listed as Endangered by the IUCN.

I’ve spent dozens, if not hundreds, of hours with humpback whales in the water, and I’ve had a few awesome encounters with sperm whales too. But I’ve never seen a right whale in the water, and somehow, I had imagined that right whales would be smaller, which no doubt contributed to my open-mouthed, dumbstruck reaction when I saw the display.

Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to be dumbstruck and humbled by the sight of a living right whale in the water one day.

I created what’s known as a Collage in Vuvox, with a series of photographs and a bit of text, supplemented by a few video snippets and hyperlinks. The photos and text carry the story line, and the video segments help give you a feel for the particular animals and locations. The hyperlinks take you to additional information.

Vuvox is still in beta, so there are a few quirks here and there. I had a minor problem while putting this together and emailed Vuvox for help. A representative responded within minutes, which tells me they’re on the ball.

After playing around with the service, I can say that I really like Vuvox. It’s a slightly different way to tell a story, and the final product you come up with can take many forms, depending on the content, the intent and your storytelling skills (as well as how much work you want…or don’t want…to put into it).

The primary drawback I see is that whatever you create lives “in the cloud”, to use the parlance of the times, which means you can’t download it and keep it on your computer, iPod or other media player. That’s kind of a bummer, but it’s a relatively minor point, and perhaps they’ll figure a way around this at some point in the future.

To all divers and fish buffs: take particular note of the segment on the newly identified Maluku frogfish. The embedded video may be the first evidence of a frogfish using toxins or some other noxious substance to ward off a would-be predator. As far as I know, there is no other documented instance of a frogfish being toxic. (If someone out there knows of such a case, please send me a message.)

The video of the Maluku frogfish fish was taken by Chutinun Mora, who is the graphic designer of FiNS Magazine.

One cautionary note: You may need relatively high bandwidth to watch the video clips. If you experience stuttering, let the clip load, then hit play again.

If you want to see a wider view of this, go directly to the Vuvox page here. The collage effect is arguably nicer with a wide screen.

1. This is a picture of an octopus. It has eight testicles. (Kelly, age 6)

2. Oysters’ balls are called pearls. (Jerry, age 6)

3. If you are surrounded by ocean you are an Island . If you don’t have ocean all round you, you are incontinent. (Wayne , age 7)

4. Sharks are ugly and mean, and have big teeth, just like Emily Richardson. She’s not my friend any more. (Kylie, age 6)

5. A dolphin breathes through an asshole on the top of its head. (Billy, age 8 )

6. My uncle goes out in his boat with 2 other men, a woman and some pots
and comes back with crabs. (Millie, age 6)

7. When ships had sails, they used to use the trade winds to cross the ocean. Sometimes when the wind didn’t blow the sailors would whistle to make the wind come. My brother said they would have been better off eating beans. (William, age 7)

8. Mermaids live in the ocean. I like mermaids. They are beautiful and I like their shiny tails, but how on earth do mermaids get pregnant? Like, really? (Helen, age 6)

9. I’m not going to write about the ocean. My baby brother is always crying, my Dad keeps yelling at my Mom, and my big sister has just got pregnant, so I can’t think what to write (Amy, age 6)

10. Some fish are dangerous. Jellyfish can sting. Electric eels can give you a shock. They have to live in caves under the sea where I think they have to plug themselves into chargers at night. (Christopher, age 7)

11. When you go swimming in the ocean, it is very cold, and it makes my willy small. (Kevin, age 6)

12. Divers have to be safe when they go under the water. Divers can’t go down alone, so they have to go down on each other. (Becky, age 8 )

13. On vacation my Mom went water skiing. She fell off when she was going
very fast. She says she won’t do it again because water fired right up her big fat ass. (Julie, age 7)

14. The ocean is made up of water and fish. Why the fish don’t drown I don’t know. (Bobby, age 6)

15. My dad was a sailor on the ocean. He knows all about the ocean. What he doesn’t know is why he quit being a sailor and married my mom. (James, age 7)

Last night, I managed to hook up with Mark Thorpe, who’s an excellent videographer and has been involved with many fascinating projects.

I first met Mark in Palau, then we grabbed a few drinks in Singapore, and now, dinner in Yokohama. We’ve decided that each successive meeting needs to be in a different country, or city at least.

Mark was accompanied by his lovely bride-to-be, which meant we behaved in a reasonably civilised manner (i.e., we didn’t get completely sloshed). Congratulations Mark and Terue!

Thank you Izume-san!

One of the issues I have to contend with is choice of RAW converters. If you shoot in RAW (Note: If you don’t…you should.), then your choice of RAW converters can make a substantial difference in how your final output looks.

Each converter interprets files slightly differently, and after extensive experimentation, I’ve concluded that there’s no one clear choice for every occasion. In short, this means having to take a look at each image with different converters, then selecting the output I like best…a time-consuming, eye-straining process.

Taking a short break from seemingly perpetual pixel-pushing, I did a quick comparison to illustrate this point.

Below are four versions of a nice, simple image. There’s not a lot of colour, so the primary emphasis is on how the blue portion looks and how contrasty the image appears. The RAW converters I used are (in order of images below): Aperture 2.1.2, Canon DPP 3.2.0.6 (Standard picture style), Adobe Camera Raw 4.6, Canon DPP 3.2.0.6 (Landscape picture style).

All the files were converted with the same settings with no additional modifications (except minor sharpening), so in theory, the only differences should result from the RAW converters. As you can see, there’s a noticeable difference in how the colours, saturation and contrast levels appear.

There are other RAW converters out there, and (in the case of Canon files) with Canon DPP, there are several alternative picture styles you can select, so the potential variation doesn’t end here.

As I mentioned above, there’s no one formula that I follow for converting files, but here are a few guidelines I use:

• For blue images (like the ones above), I try Canon DPP first, tuning the white balance settings to try to achieve the precise hue and saturation I want. One thing I’ve learned is that with DPP, you have to be careful of potentially over-saturating the image.
  
• For colourful macro images, I use Canon DPP the most. The high saturation is often a bonus, and smooth colour transitions make the files looks really nice. The major exception is with intrinsically high contrast subjects (see next point).
  
• For images with a lot of inherent contrast, I try Aperture first. Aperture seems to reduce/ minimise contrast (as is apparent in the images above).
  
• Adobe RAW is a good middle ground, giving a not-too-contrasty, not-too-saturated, not-too-mute result. This makes sense, as you can then proceed to fine-tune with Photoshop.
  
• When I’m lazy or short on time, I use Aperture, because it’s quick and convenient. I use Aperture to organise my files, so it’s easy to find a file, do minor adjustments, then export to the specs I need.

Back to picture processing…