Jul 222013
 
Critters on Richelieu Rock

About the site After realising last week that I hadn’t talked about diving Richelieu Rock aboard the MV Giamani, I shared a couple of my favourite wide angle shots from the dive with you. And the view across the dive site was pretty spectacular. Beyond the view in great vis I really enjoyed was the two dives I did with my macro lens, because every crevice I looked into, a critter was looking back out at me. Richelieu is covered in critters from lionfish to clownfish, dancing shrimp to decorator crabs, with spotfaced, honeycomb and white-eyed moray eels jostling for position. About the dive The abundance of photogenic critters presented a bit of a dilemma. Instead of being able to focus on getting [read more…]

Jul 082013
 
Richelieu Rock, Thailand

About the dive site I had a very relaxed two days last weekend, and decided to go for a late afternoon Sunday dive down at Mornington Pier. This turned out to be a terrible idea as I  filled the housing with seawater in my first ever camera flood. After getting assessments done for repairs and replacements, the whole lot is now with my insurance company. I’m very hopeful of being back in the water with camera in hand in another week or two, but it means I didn’t take any underwater shots over the weekend. So I was having a look back through my archive and discovered despite talking about the macro shots and the wreck shots from my Thailand [read more…]

Jul 012013
 
Rocky foregrounds in Tank Cave

About the cave Looking back, this is the 14th photo article I’ve posted about my trips through Tank Cave. With easy access, miles of shallow tunnels and clear water it’s easy to see why we keep going back. On the other hand, long tunnels tend to lead to long swimming dives and it becomes a challenge to find a new angle while on the move. Things that have occupied me in the past include reflections in surface bubbles, action shots of divers reeling out, the perfect tunnel shot and more. About the dive I have to admit I wasn’t feeling the inspiration on this particular weekend. The more I dive in Tank, the more I notice the diver damage throughout [read more…]

Jun 242013
 
Weedy seadragon portrait under Flinders Pier

About the site Flinders Pier is known for weedy seadragons and it would be rare to dive there and not see one. It can be a very shallow dive – I’ve spent an hour underwater at low tide and not been deep enough to turn my dive computer on. The pier is a great dive when the wind is blowing from the west as it’s on the other side of the Mornington Peninsula and sheltered when Mornington and Rye Piers are exposed. About the dive I dived at Flinders on the long weekend Monday. The conditions were dead flat up top. Underwater the vis was milky but there wasn’t much floating sand, and the water temperature was finally down to [read more…]

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…]

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…]