Diving the Lot – Fontaine de Truffe

 Cave diving, Overseas, rEvo  No Responses »
Sep 302014
 
Diving the Lot - Fontaine de Truffe

After a check out dive in the Cabouy (which is big and dark with average vis), and the Ressel (which was lovely but a bit milky), I was excited about a trip into La Truffe. Rather than an active streamway, the water in La Truffe in summer comes from percolation through the limestone. This means the vis is crystal clear and very Gambier-esque. The tunnel here is smaller than the first two caves and stays shallow through a number of sumps over a long distance. Our plan was to dive the first sump and have a look in the second. The one concern was the size of the entrance restriction. I was keen to take the rEvo in rather than moving [read more…]

Diving the Lot – the Ressel

 Cave diving, Overseas, rEvo  2 Responses »
Sep 232014
 
Diving the Lot - the Ressel

I’ve just hit the ground in Australia after a brilliant two weeks cave diving in France topped off with speaking at Eurotek in the UK. Over the course of the trip I took over 2,000 photos in the French caves. And over the next few weeks I’m looking forward to sharing my favourites with you, with a little backstory behind them. As usual, huge thanks to those who made my diving possible and enjoyable and accommodated my need to take lots of photos – Joachim Krieselemaier, Tom Feiden, Georg Stauch, Duncan Price, Forrest Wilson and Ken Smith. Thanks also to Leigh Bishop, Eurotek co-founder, for inviting me to the conference to speak about our ongoing Elk River project in Birmingham. [read more…]

Eurotek this weekend

 Cave diving, Other, Victoria  1 Response »
Sep 162014
 
Eurotek this weekend

I’m currently in the midst of a whirlwind tour of the caves of The Lot, France and taking huge numbers of photos to share with you shortly. First though, this weekend I will be in Birmingham at Eurotek. I’m speaking at 11am on Sunday morning which is hopefully enough time for the assembled company to recover from any indiscretions on Saturday evening. My talk will be covering our adventures in Elk River which you may have been following along here – exploration beyond sump 6 and into sump 7, survey and mapping, dye tracing and of course photography. If you happen to be in the area, come and say hi…I look forward to seeing you there!  

Shooting into the Indonesian Sun

 Ocean diving, Reef diving  No Responses »
Sep 102014
 
Shooting into the Indonesian Sun

About the dives As you might have gathered from the last three weeks of posting, I had some great dives through Komodo and Alor on the Arenui. The water was warm and clear, the little fish were plentiful and the corals were healthy. There’s only so many ways to say – the diving was very nice! – so today I thought I’d talk about these photos instead. About the photos Clear water and bright sunny days up top creates pluses and minuses for wide angle photography. One of the definite advantages is that up in the shallows when the surface is calm you can capture these incredible sun rays. The key to good rays is a fast shutter speed and [read more…]

Very small things seen in Komodo

 Macro, Ocean diving, Reef diving  No Responses »
Sep 022014
 
Very small things seen in Komodo

About the dives The first half of our trip from Alor to Komodo was more focussed on muck diving, but it was on the last couple of days on the Arenui that I got some macro photos that I really love. There was less tiny life around and it was easier to focus on a subject photographically without getting excitedly distracted by the next tiny thing. I also had a few great photos achieved which helped with the confidence to try new things. In this instance it was photos of things I generally consider a bit too small to sensibly take photos of with my lens setup. About the photos Both of these shots were taken at the maximum capability [read more…]