There you go - if that post title doesn't work for a band name or some murder mystery novel, I don't know what would... ;)

Anyway, our second to last dive on our most recent trip was at a site called "The Lost Blue Hole". A blue hole is basically an underwater sinkhole, and is so named because from above they appear a deep dark blue color when compared to the shallow light blue color of the reef and sand around them.

This photo really doesn't do justice to this blue hole, but does kind of give the idea of what it is like to dive into one - to some extent, it felt like diving off a cliff.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 18mm. 1/200 sec at f/5.6. ISO 800. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in eTTL mode. Raw conversion in Adobe Camera Raw.

Even at its widest zoom, my 18-55mm lens couldn't even begin to capture what the opening of this blue hole looked like.

As we went down into the hole, there were many ledges and shelves where various fish and other critters were taking up residence. On one large shelf, there was an enormous sea turtle with two incredibly large remoras attached to it...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 18mm. 1/200 sec at f/5.6. ISO 800. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in eTTL mode. Raw conversion in Adobe Camera Raw.

There were also plenty of lionfish at this dive site (notice the big one in the right side of the frame).

Since the day was pretty overcast, it was fairly dark down in the blue hole, so Anya and I didn't linger for long. After a few minutes, we went back to the opening to explore the sand and small patch reefs surrounding the blue hole. As we came up, Anya pointed out a medium sized Southern Stingray swimming by us. I quickly framed my shot and rattled off some photos as I gently swam along next to it.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 18mm. 1/200 sec at f/5.6. ISO 800. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in eTTL mode. Raw conversion in Adobe Camera Raw.

Look closely and see if you can spot the second, much larger stingray hiding right in front of your eyes! I honestly didn't see it the first time by, and I'm glad I wasn't swimming directly over top of it as that could have spooked it and could have been a bad situation.

We also saw a small group of Nurse Sharks, some of which were displaying flashing behavior where they give a quick tail flick while turning and rubbing their sides against the ground or some other rough surface - usually to try and rid themselves of parasites, or just to scratch an itch.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 18mm. 1/200 sec at f/8. ISO 800. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in eTTL mode. Raw conversion in Adobe Camera Raw.

By this time, I did notice the extra large stingray still hiding itself in the sand. I approached it slowly from the front and managed to get a nice portrait...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 18mm. 1/200 sec at f/8. ISO 800. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in eTTL mode. Raw conversion and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw.

While the conditions weren't great for photography because of the overcast morning, this was still an interesting dive, and a good reminder to keep my eyes open and look for hidden critters everywhere!

- Bill

It is ridiculously cold here, so I'm daydreaming about warm waters and circling reef sharks...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 22mm. 1/250 sec at f/8. ISO 400. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in eTTL mode. Raw conversion in Adobe Camera Raw.

Stay warm wherever you are...

- Bill

Sorry - it has been a while since I have posted... I got sick last week and then have been working on a bunch of little projects around the house - I haven't even found time to process any more photos. So just stopping by real quick to share another Caribbean Reef Shark photo today.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 22mm. 1/200 sec at f/5.6. ISO 400. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in eTTL mode. Raw conversion in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

Ok - as promised... this trip had sharks... lots of sharks... up close and personal...

Man - that was fun... it gets better and crazier (remember - we've got a shark feeding dive coming up later in the week!)

- Bill

Ok - so admittedly, I had two years of rust on my underwater photography skills when I went on this trip, and it definitely showed. I've had to do some work to salvage pretty much every photo I've kept so far, and each one has needed a pretty heavy dose of cleanup. Then I came to today's photo...

I was about to delete this one; at first glance, it is a complete loss and on any other day, I very well may have just hit the delete key and not thought twice about it. But for whatever reason, something caught my eye, and I wondered if I could recover enough from the file to make a worthwhile image. I ran it through a number of adjustments within Adobe Camera Raw, and then finally processed it into a sepia tone using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.

I found the end result pretty pleasing to be honest...

1. Straight out of the camera		3. Attempted color correction in ACR
2. Initial corrections in ACR		4. Final result after Silver Efex

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM AF at 14mm, 1/250 sec at f/5.6. ISO 400. Ikelite Housing and Port with dual Ikelite DS 161 Strobes in eTTL mode. Raw conversion Adobe Camera Raw, additional processing in Adobe Photoshop CS5 with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2

What do you think? I think it has the feeling of a pirate's treasure map or such... it just seems fitting and really is a vast improvement from the original. Plus I must have a thing for photos of nurse sharks processed in sepia tone...

Thanks for stopping by!

- Bill

Well, sharks - Caribbean Reef Sharks to be precise - were probably the marquee critter on this trip, so we might as well get right into them now.
The other diver in this shot is our friend Jim (or "Ferris"), and as the two of us lined up to take shots of this shark, I thought it might be cool to show another diver in the frame. It also helped that I was shooting with the Sigma 10-20mm super-wide-angle lens to let me get plenty of stuff in the frame. What that lens didn't help was maintaining size perspective as it compressed a wide area into the frame making the shark (which is probably about 15 feet away from us) look much smaller than it was (probably about 6-8 feet long).

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM AF at 14mm, 1/120 sec at f/5. ISO 400. Ikelite Housing and Port with dual Ikelite DS 161 Strobes in eTTL mode. Raw conversion Adobe Camera Raw.

There's plenty more to come, so stay tuned...

- Bill

Well, I've been playing around more with the Nik Software Silver Efex, and processed this B&W (ok, technically sepia) of a nurse shark photo that I've shared previously.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 18mm. 1/120 sec at f/11. ISO 640. Ikelite Housing and Port with dual Ikelite 161 Strobes in eTTL mode. Raw conversion and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw, B&W conversion in Nik Software Silver Efex.

I really like how this one turned out. You certainly wouldn't think of sepia when you think of underwater photography, but then again... maybe you should... sepia is produced from the ink of cuttlefish!

- Bill

I want to go diving.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 24mm. 1/120 sec at f/20. ISO 640. Ikelite Housing and Port with dual Ikelite 161 Strobes in eTTL mode. Raw conversion in Adobe Camera Raw.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 18mm. 1/120 sec at f/11. ISO 640. Ikelite Housing and Port with dual Ikelite 161 Strobes in eTTL mode. Raw conversion and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

Ok just a quick post today to share what has become my new wallpaper on one of my work monitors...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 18mm. 1/120 sec at f/22. ISO 320. Ikelite Housing and Port with dual Ikelite 161 Strobes in eTTL mode. Raw conversion and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw (mouseover for original).

Thanks for stopping by.

- Bill

PS: If you haven't voted on the other nurse shark photo or seen the videos, keep scrolling!

Ok - let me preface today's post with a warning... Don't this this on your own. Sharks are definitely still wild animals, and while nurse sharks seem docile, they are responsible for many diver accidents every year - mainly because dives pester them and do not respect their space. These nurse sharks had been swimming near us for several days, and we were able to observe their behavior and had several members of our group who have experience working with the sharks. We let the sharks come and go as they pleased and never prevented them from doing what they wanted to do. We just gave them light scratches and petting, never grabbing a hold of the shark or touching near their face/mouth. Again - do not try this on your own.

This was a pretty awesome experience. These sharks were fairly small - in the range of 3 - 4 feet. Though we did have larger ones swimming in, they didn't really have any interest in being petted - they were hunting.

The little one really liked my camera and kept swimming closer and closer, I got a couple shots of her so close that her face in underneath the lens! But I did get one shot that I absolutely love and I'll share that tomorrow.

- Bill