Pic of the Day – Ambon Arch

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Ambon Arch

I captured this image at a site called “The Arch”, on the west side of Ambon Island, in Indonesia. The image was shot with a Tokina 10-17mm lens, fully dialled out at 10mm. It was still fairly early in the morning, and the light had not yet migrated into the area where this arch is located, so there was no opportunity to try to capture a sun ball or rays in the composition. Still, I like the moody blues, and to be honest, these big wide angles are usually easier to expose without trying to deal with very strong light from the sun.

Also fortunate was that the large school of fusiliers was around (it was long gone by the time we dropped down to do a second dive on this site). There was quite a bit of current whooshing through the site on this dive, which perhaps encourages these fish to school like this. The current also makes it a worky kind of shot, and this site is not shallow (I believe I was at about 80 feet when I shot this image), so I was outta gas pretty prematurely on this dive ;^)

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Pic of the Day – Hammerhead Shark

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Happy Hammerhead

Today, I offer up a hammerhead shark as Pic of the Day, in honour of the recent CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) conference decision, at which several species of sharks, including hammerheads, as well as much beloved manta rays, were deemed threatened, and placed on a protection list.

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Pic of the Day – Anemone Fish Trio

Anemone fish – Amphiprion ocellaris

While I beaver away on the next instalment of the Komodo series, I thought I’d resume my ‘Pic of the Day’ posts. These are images that I have stashed away in my archives. I am going to dust off a few and share them, with some description of where I took them and what the heck they are.

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Raja Ampat, Revisted

Boo Rock

Recently, I was very flattered to be asked to contribute to Sport Diver Magazine for their on-going series on “Top 10 Dives” of various popular destinations.

Here is a link to the gallery and short write up I did for the magazine: Sport Diver Magazine – Raja Ampat Gallery

And, for a longer article on our group trip to this destination, featuring many more pictures, please follow this link.

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Pic of the Day – Monkey Business

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I have been sifting through my Komodo images in order to find stuff to share in my ongoing (and I promise, soon to be ending ;^) Komodo photo blog series. I happened upon an entire day of unedited images – and in that batch, found this funny one of a monkey I shot (with the camera ;^) on our tour of the Komodo Dragon sanctuary on Rinca island.

Not sure what caught his attention, but I love the expression…

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 8 – Back in the Blue

After a side trip to Fiji, here I am back to revisiting Komodo, about half way through our ten day adventure.

The last few blog posts covered the great macro dives we did in Bima Harbour, off the island off Sumbawa. After pulling anchor, we headed back to the Gili’s in North Komodo, for one more day of big blue diving before starting our way south, to the famed Rinca Island, and beyond.

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Fiji 2013 – Love, Actually

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So when I sat down to write this blog post about Fiji, what emerged was a love story. I mean, I seriously love this country, and like all true love, my adoration only deepens with time. I was planning on waxing poetic on how amazingly loving and welcoming the native Fijian people are, and about how gorgeous the country is, and about how deep and beautiful traditions live on in Fijian village life, and about how much Fijians take pride in their country. But really, I don’t have the words; you have to experience Fiji to understand it. It is still, after over a quarter of a century of travels, my favourite country in the world to visit.

Oh, and did I mention the awesome diving? ;^)

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Bula!

More radio silence from me as I snuck away for a week of diving with two of our daughters in Fiji. It was a last minute quickie, and fortunately I was able to bag decent airfares from Air Pacific (which flies non-stop out of LAX to Nadi, Fiji several days a week) and Wananavu Resort came back to me with a very attractive package deal for our accommodations, transfers, meals and diving.

We had a fantastic time exploring (anew) the drop dead gorgeous reefs of the Bligh/Vatu-i-Ra waters, which is the area between the large south island of Viti Levu and the large north island of Vanua Levu. Conditions were for the most part benign for this trip – calm surface conditions on 5 of our 6 dive days, and gentle currents on all dives. Added bonus – the mellow conditions allowed me to finally do some shore diving in front of the resort. I really grooved on it, and will be writing about that in a future blog instalment.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 7 – Rinse & Repeat

So here we are, still anchored in Bima Harbour – at the site of the morning’s rude awakening bomb dive and two more sweet muck dives. There is one more dunk offered this day, a night dive on Fuzzy Bottom – the very same site we explored extensively all day long.

The earlier dives had been very productive in terms of coolio macro subjects, and Michael, our cruise director, opined that the night dive should be pretty epic as well, so I decided to forego the strong temptation of sunset drinky-poos with some of the gang (including Mr G), and instead suited up in a cold and clammy wetsuit to jump in to the black water with the rest of our group’s night diving keeners. The tasty Bintang beer(s) would wait…

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 6 – The Muck, And Nothing But The Muck

When I last made an entry, we were muck diving in Bima Harbour, on the island of Sumbawa. The morning had a shaky start, what with the fish bombing that rocked our world, at least for several minutes.

As I wrote before, fortunately the detonations eventually ceased, and the rest of our dive day was much more peaceful.

Rather than describing the next two dives with words, I thought I would instead share a sampling of some of the really crazy stuff that lives in the muck of Indonesia, and I’ll add some expanded descriptions to give a sense of the size of these critters.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 5 – Getting Bombed in Bima

This is going to be a very, er, explosive blog bit – because when I referenced “getting bombed in Bima”, I am not talking about inhaling too many Bintang beers ;^)

Our up close and personal bombing experience was provided courtesy of local Indonesian fisherman – likely residents of the large island of Sumbawa, which lies between the islands that comprise Komodo National Park (to the east) and Lombok (and then Bali), to the west. They were brazenly dropping their fish bombs in plain view of the live aboard we were diving from – the Komodo Dancer, and the blasting was occurring within Bima Bay – a large, populated inlet on Sumbawa Island.  The culprit was not more than a half mile or so away.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 4 – Things That Go Bump In The Night

Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone in a flurry (well, actually here in Vancouver, not so much a flurry as a soggy deluge – it was the wettest December I can remember). It was a busy time, with nary a pause for blogging.

When I last made an entry, we were at Sangeyang Island, north of Komodo National Park. It was some beautiful, calm diving, highlighted by champagne bubbles percolating out of the sand, and scores of nudibranchs.

The last dive we did in the area was a dusk dive, at a site named Bonto. After the relatively mellow dives earlier in the day, those of us who made the plunge got a rude surprise when we found ourselves in a pretty hefty current. As I have written before, current at night is always a bit unsettling – it is very easy to become separated from other divers, especially in low visibility, and this dive was no exception. This was a muck dive (silty bottom), so there was a veritable sh*tstorm to contend with as those of us with cameras tried to line up for some shots of some of the crazy critters that live there. Holding place in current, in deep silt, is not easy, and we all managed to kick up a lot of dust.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 3 – Champagne Diving & Nudibranch Dreams

Sangeyang Island – an active volcano

So you might be wondering, what is it like to dive near an active volcano? The answer, in the case of Sangeyang, is: effervescent, warm, and slightly freaky (one has to consider that if the thing is simmering, it could blow at some point…)

Sangeyang Island is located north of Komodo National Park. The image above was taken from Gili Lawa Island, the evening view before the crew pulled the pin and motored across the (thankfully calm) water to reach it by early morning.

Right up front, we could tell that this place was going to be special – Michael, our Cruise Director, really lit up when briefing us on it, bestowing it with such adjectives as ‘heavenly’ and ‘surreal’. And so it was.

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Here We Are, Yet Again…

I have been warming up to the idea of working on the next chapter of the Komodo adventure (amidst the Christmas chaos), but the recent events in Connecticut have been playing heavily in my mind, and make my photo blogging seem inconsequential and irreverent by comparison.

I can only imagine the profound grief of losing a child.  The inexplicable nature of this kind of murderous rampage only makes the loss even more incomprehensible.

One of the most poignant pieces I’ve read over the past few days (in the flotsam of pro-gun/anti-gun internet wars of words popping up on social media, and in forums on news sites, etc etc) is this essay by an American journalist about her own troubled teenaged son —> I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother.

Less guns would be good. More treatment for mentally ill people would be good. But in my heart, I know that these kinds of horrible events are just going to keep on keeping on.

I think the mother who wrote the article linked above knows this too.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 2 – Rock ‘n Roll

Sunrise in Komodo National Park

After an overnight navigation (never my favourite part of live aboard dive trips, more about that mild, but fairly founded phobia, in a future instalment ;^), we woke up to the beautiful sunrise featured above, and found ourselves at Gili Lawa Laut (island), in the northern part of Komodo National Park. The plan was for two dives in the area, before moving the boat during the lunch break.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 1- Here We Be

So when I last blogged, we had just finished up a few days of diving in Bali, in the Tulamben area. The afternoon of the day before our flight out to Komodo, we were shuttled down to Sanur, a resort town that is about a 20 minute drive from Denpasar Airport. It is not advisable to plan for long transfers (like the 3+ hour drive from Tulamben to Denpasar) on the day of a flight, unless the flight is late afternoon or evening. The traffic snarls on Bali are legendary, and as we experienced on arrival, road closures for festivals (and horrific traffic accidents) seem to happen frequently.

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Bali Photo Blog – Chapter 4 – Is that a muck stick, or are you just happy to see me? ;^)

For this final instalment on the Bali portion of our trip, I am going to share beacoup images, all of which were captured on muck dives near Scuba Seraya Resort.

So, you might be wondering, what the heck is muck diving anyway?  By most divers’ definition, muck dives are dives where the bottom is, well, mucky.  Silty, sandy, garbage strewn – I’ve done all of these, and enjoyed every one.

Muck dives are different than reef dives in that the dominant physical feature is not a beautiful coral garden, but instead is, what appears at first glance, to be a bit of disappointing wasteland.  There may be a few coral outcroppings, or some small bommies, or a cluster of hydroids, or a sponge, but muck diving is generally not pretty, and other than taking pictures of other divers taking pictures of stuff in the muck, there is no good reason to screw on a wide angle lens.

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Bali Photo Blog – Chapter 3 – Liberty Time

So I lied when I last posted in this blog series on Indonesia.  I said that next up would be something about shore muck diving in the Tulamben area of Bali.  Instead, I think I will first do a bit of a spiel on the Liberty Wreck, on which we did two dives this trip – one fairly early in the morning (where I shot wide angle), and one night dive (where I shot macro).

The night dive was a new approach; I’ve dove the Liberty several times over a couple of previous visits to Bali, but never after dark.  Given how bodacious it is as a daytime dive – both for wide angle and macro, we figured a night dive on it would be awesome too – and it pretty much was – well, maybe except for the current ;^)

Current and night diving are a bedevilling duo.  I’ve done a few current night dives over the years, and they are tough.  On a reef or muck dive, you can easily become separated from your buddy or guided group, and it can be freaky, well, at least it is for me, to find yourself all by your lonesome – no other lights in sight, just you and the creepy crawly critters.

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Bali Photo Blog – Chapter 2 – She Shoots, She Scores?

As I continue with my Indonesian show and tell, I write the subject line of this particular blog post with some irony.

Shooting images under water is challenging – so many variables come in to play – choosing appropriate camera settings for aperture and shutter speed to get the desired depth of field and background, choosing intensity and placement of the strobes, the subject(s) might be moving, you might be moving (cursed current!), there might be a lot of particulate in the water – either from plankton or kicked up silt by other divers, the subject(s) might be highly light reflective (silver and white thingies), or conversely, suck up light (dark coloured thingies), or, be totally perplexing in that they are both light and dark in coloration.

Seriously, I have to confess that the whole thing is a bit of a crapshoot sometimes.

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Bali Photo Blog – Chapter 1 – I Spy, With My Little Eye…

Finally, some pictures from the recent trip to Indonesia (Bali & Komodo) to share.

First of all, let me confess that I took quite a lot of images on this adventure, and it is going to take me some serious time to wade through and process all the keepers. So far I have managed to get through the first three days of diving in Bali – 10 dives in total – and I have about 100 images that I am happy with. I still have something like 35 dives’ worth from Komodo that I haven’t even looked at yet. Yowza. Indo is incredibly critter rich, and despite my intentions to try to just shoot “new” (to me) stuff, my enthusiasm for always trying to improve my skills (and my photo stock) got the better of me. I will for sure pay for all that trigger happiness with a numb butt and carpal tunnel aggrevation ;^)

There were quite a few first sightings for me – several new (to me) nudibranchs – one of my favourite photo subjects – I love these often wildly coloured and patterned little slugs, and the fact that they don’t typically flee at the arrival of paparazzi schlepping a bigass camera makes them all that much more attractive to me ;^).

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