OK - I need a break from those mega-assortment posts, and this photo is my hands-down favorite from the aquarium, so it fully deserves to be shared on its own...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 52mm, 1/60 sec at f/5.6. ISO 6400. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw, and additional adjustments in Photoshop CS5.

This little pygmy cuttlefish sure put on quite the display for us. I'm not quite sure what caught his attention, but he was in full show.

Due to the low lighting, the shot required a fairly wide aperture (best this lens can do at that focal length) and a high ISO, so there was quite a bit of noise reduction done to make the image presentable. Unfortunately, as I'm learning, this causes the image to lose some sharpness, so I had to run a thin line between removing the noise and keeping the image from getting too soft.

All in all (especially considering I haven't delved into this too much) I'm pretty happy with the results. Now if only I could get to see something like that on a dive!

- Bill

So one of the things that I really wanted to see while in Wakatobi was a cephalopod. So far on our two previous dive trips to Cozumel, we'd gotten close but my poor air consumption caused us to miss out. The first year, we were sitting on the boat for a good while before the rest of the group surfaced with stories of seeing multiple octopi. Last summer, the group all swarmed a small coral mound where an octopus was spotted, but my air was low and strong currents literally pulled Anya and I away from the opportunity.

For this trip, I was bound and determined to see some sort of cephalopod - an octopus, a squid, or possibly even a cuttlefish (I wasn't going to push my luck and expect to see a nautilus). The brochure for Wakatobi made it seem like we would see any (or all - except for the nautilus) of these critters on a majority of the dives.

The week started out semi-promising. The folks at the front of our group happened upon an octopus while it was feeding on a crab. Unfortunately for us, we were at the back of the group and he got scared off before we could get there. I saw a fleeting glimpse of something, but couldn't be certain of what I saw.

Then things went cold. Everyone in the group (including Mike - our instructor - who has more dives than anyone (including the dive-masters) and as seen just about everything) kept asking the dive-masters over and over for octopi or cuttlefish. The dive-masters subsequently gave us more and more desperate answers as to why we haven't seen them or that they aren't quite as common as we might have expected.

And then came our night dive - which I knew would be my best chance. I decided I wasn't surfacing until I saw something good - something really good. And I didn't care if that meant I had to swim from person to person in the group and steal air from their secondary regulator (interestingly enough called an octopus regulator) until I did.

Early in the dive, the group split into two; myself, Anya, Ferris, Bruce, and Vanessa went off in one direction, while the others went somewhere else (I still don't know how we got split up, or where they went). And things started out pretty promising as we saw a frogfish and a squat lobster (more on both of those at a later date). While both of those things are both cool, they're not cephalopods...

Then Vanessa started making quite the racket to get our attention - it is customary while diving to simply tap on your air tank (usually with something else metal) to make noise to get other divers' attentions. We quickly made our way over to where she was, and were rewarded with seeing this little guy...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/12th sec at f/8. Image Stabilization on. ISO 400 (Auto). Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite DS161 Strobe in TTL Mode. No post production.

Honestly, it took me a few seconds to realize what I was looking at - both out of sheer excitement and a bit of confusion from the strong camouflage. In the middle of both of those photos, there is a small white-ish cuttlefish. I apologize for the terrible photos - they're the best I got. It was dark, my pulse was racing, and I wanted to get some shots fired before it disappeared - which it did... only 7 seconds after we found it!

In the first shot, you can see the cuttlefish more exposed through the coral, but camera movement caused a terrible amount of ghosting. You can make out the main body and the large round eyes on the head, and the short tentacles curled up in front of the face. On the second shot, things are a bit more crisp (though still somewhat blurred) and shows a bit more of the skin texture (cuttlefish are able to change their skin texture at will for camouflage), but is more hidden behind the coral.

I'm not 100% sure, but the species might be a Crinoid Cuttlefish (Sepia sp. 2) or a baby Broadclub Cuttlefish (Sepia latimanus). The Crinoid species only get to about 2 inches full grown, whereas the Broadclub - the more common for this area - can grow to 20 inches. Either way - crinoid or baby - this little guy was quite the find! Certainly something fairly rare to see. And obviously, fairly hard to photograph.

Regardless, a mere seven seconds that I will remember for the rest of my life. I might not have captured the best photos with my camera, but I certainly recorded the image in my brain! Which is something that you need to remember to do as a photographer. Sometimes it is the photo that got away that we remember the best and means the most to us. Especially when it drives us to get out there and try for another...

... which I hope I get to do sooner rather than later.

- Bill