Posts Tagged Nudibranch

Cute Nudibranch

Sat, Mar 14th, 2009  |   Equipment, Technique, Marine Life, Places, Adventures 10 Comments

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.

nudibranch

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!).

Seeing the Light

Thu, Mar 12th, 2009  |   Marine Life, People, Photography, Places, Adventures 4 Comments

nudibranchs

Here’s a photo of a couple of nudibranchs, perhaps getting ready to mate. If you’ve been to Lembeh before, you know that there are a few sites nudibranchs seem to love. This pair was at Nudi Falls.

These are relatively common sea slugs (the name escapes me at this early hour), so lighting them differently is one way to continue having fun even after years of seeing the same nudibranchs.

The mottled pattern of these animals exaggerates the dramatic lighting, which fits nicely with the illumination of the underlying sand…which alternates between patches of darkness and scattered bright areas.

The first of our group arrived yesterday, so they’ll join us in the water this morning. And, our new friend Andy will be departing today. He’s been a lot of fun to have around…sometimes (always?) at his expense.

He desperately wanted to see a mimic and wonderpus. We looked and looked and looked, but came up empty while he was diving. I jokingly predicted that we’d find them immediately after he stopped diving, and sure enough, once he was finished…we had two wonderpuses for over an hour. The critters just know.

Andy has caught both the diving and camera bugs, so it won’t be long before he’s schlepping around multiple cameras to remote locations around the world. Though it’s early stages yet, he seems to have a terminal case. This is Andy waking up really early to fiddle with camera gear:

andy

Finally, I’ve been using the same camera set-ups for a few days, so I’m off to the camera room this morning to switch a few things around before the morning dive.