Photographer of the Year competition

 Other  No Responses »
Jun 102013
 
Photographer of the Year competition

For the last couple of years I have entered photos into the World Shootout, an underwater photo competition where the photos you enter can be taken anywhere in the world within the competition month of August. August puts me at a bit of a disadvantage as it’s midwinter here and the ocean diving weather is normally terrible. As such my cave photography has dominated my entries, competing with cute clownfish and other expressive marine life. Following the World Shootout, there’s an onsite competition at Eilat in the Red Sea later in the year. Putting the photographers in the same diving location levels the playing field and I would love to join in! To that end I was very happy to [read more…]

The Shaving Brush in McCavity

 Cave diving, NSW  No Responses »
Jun 032013
 
The Shaving Brush in McCavity

About the cave While I did get a dive in over this weekend just past, a crappy weather forecast led me to leave the camera behind. In reality I should have taken it as the vis and the ocean conditions were fine. But I didn’t, and I find myself with no update for you this morning, so I’ve gone back to the archives to look for an interesting photo that hasn’t had exposure up here yet. I dived in McCavity Cave (the wet bit of Limekiln Cave) up at Wellington back in early 2012, guided by the fantastic Greg Ryan. I talked about it at the time in the post here, noting how the cave was larger, darker and milkier [read more…]

Triggerfish in Tank Cave

 Cave diving, Mt Gambier  No Responses »
May 272013
 
Triggerfish in Tank Cave

About the cave Tank Cave, Mt Gambier has kilometres of crystal clear, shallow tunnels perfect for testing things out. You can see the different areas in these two photos from the same dive – small twisting light-walled tunnels vs large dark chambers. All in the same still and clear water, so great fun for photography. About the dive Over the course of the weekend we dived down the gold lines and through J and K section, followed by a long swim to GS tunnel yesterday. All of the dives involved a trip out or a trip home under Lake Ayre, one of my favourite places to take photos. Taking photos under this huge reflective surface is tricky. The chamber is [read more…]

Self portraits in Elk River

 Cave diving, Victoria  1 Response »
May 202013
 
Self portraits in Elk River

About the trip Although I didn’t take very many photos on our last weekend trip into Elk River, I wanted to share a couple more of them with you. Last week I talked about getting shots of Sandy coming through sumps 2 and 3 and the difficulty of staying ahead of the silt to get a shot through clear water. On the same trip I was also keen to get a shot in the first downstream sump. Jim Arundale was the first person to pass sump 1. Over a number of attempts he pushed his way through the short underwater distance to the other side. The most pertinent feature of the first sump isn’t the length though, it’s the height. [read more…]

High speed underwater photography in Elk River

 Cave diving, Victoria  3 Responses »
May 132013
 
High speed underwater photography in Elk River

About the site We were back in Elk River streamway this weekend, hoping to survey, tidy up some line and have another look at the end. Elk River currently consists of 6 downstream sumps that we have passed, and a seventh sump that surfaces twice in air bells and continues underwater. It’s over 1.5kms of hard caving to the known end. There are lots of interesting bits – crawling over gravel dragging tanks, sinking in deep mud, squeezing through vertical rift passages and lowering gear through breakdown piles. My favourite bit of the second trip was my push dive at the end into the sixth sump. Unlike the muddy soup I’d been crawling, wading and wriggling through sump 6 was [read more…]

Two years on the web

 Other  4 Responses »
May 062013
 
Two years on the web

I paid an unexpected bill for web hosting this week, and realised that this post marks the second anniversary for this website. Given I was afraid to start until I had ten pre-written articles for fear I’d spend a lot of time setting up a site and then not be able to create enough content, I’ve come a long way! This post is my 118th article, each with a couple of photos and some thoughts on how they were taken. If anything my diving has become more regular and it’s rare that I’m not in the water at least once a week. Most Mondays I’m therefore well placed to write up the best shots from my last dive or two. [read more…]

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