Night Ships
Mmmm . . . stepped out of the front door last night to let Sheba out for a little swim – she likes to skinny dip in the dark – and the lights on the ships across the harbour simply stunned me. Had to trot back inside to get my G11.
I set everything to manual and cranked the ISO up to 800 and got this telephoto shot by bracing the camera against a coconut tree:
I backed off the telephoto a little and got this nice little panorama:
I’m not feeling too wordy today. I think I may have blown a fuse or something yesterday. Maybe it’s the Aliens influencing me to cool it.
Going back to the images from my dive with Monty Armstrong on The Lady Anne I found one that I’d forgotten to massage. It’s a kind of Sea Squirt that grows profusely in the rich (read full of sewerage) waters of the inner harbour:
Its formal name is Rhopalaea circulata. I’m actually quite happy with the image, considering that the water was filthy. It marks the first time that I’ve posted an image of a species that is clearly better than anything that I could find on the web (not that a better one doesn’t exist somewhere). Yeah, I’m feeling a bit smug about that. Hey, I work hard at this. Even geeks should get to win once in a while.
This little Freckled Hawkfish (Paracirrhites fosteri) also makes me smile:
It gave me every opportunity to capture a good image. If there is any fault for imperfection, it’s the photographer’s. I wish every fish posed so nicely.
Well, I’m running out of words. Some days I feel like I could write all day. Sometimes I do, for magazine articles. Other days, it just doesn’t flow. However, I can’t leave without showing you one more shot of the amazing Broadclub Cuttlefish (Sepia latimanus) that inspired my bizarre “Aliens” post of yesterday.
I had a dream this morning about these critters. Very amusing.
Ursula Andress was in it too.
Related posts:
- Hawkfishes – Little Jewels of the Sea It’s Saturday morning, so I’m off for a dive. I don’t have much time for composition, so I’ll just show you some pictures. (with apologies to those who have seen them a hundred times already) I like the Hawkfishes. Unlike some other families, there’s not an ugly one in the bunch. (Click...
- The Aquarium in My Front Yard With my dive count now over two thousand, it’s amazing to me that all but possibly a hundred have been within a ten minute boat ride from our dock. This must surely make me one of the luckiest divers on the planet. Since I’m feeling so lucky today, let me...
- The Big Red Ball Two big red balls today. One is a feather star in the sea and the other is a huge flower in my yard. I'll let me botanist readers tell me what the flower is....
- Cuttlefish Hunger I Googled "cuttlefish feeding" images and found plenty of examples of the act of feeding, but no others showing a fish sticking out a a cuttlefish's mouth....
- To The Aliens in My Front Yard – Live Long and Prosper In the right frame of mind, you can enter the sea and appreciate it as an alien world. It's all DNA based. Living sutff is all pretty much the same. But WOW!...
- Actual Work! Oh, NO! You'll get less sense than usual from me today. Today I had to do some actual work. The nerve of them! I'm the guy who lives in squalor down in the IT Dungeon....
- Wearing the Captain’s Hat Someone passed Ush the Captain's Hat and she perched on the stern rail with her now famous shiny red sunglasses. What can one do but take a picture?...
Man those U/W shots just get to me- the colours on that cuttlefish and the way it stands out almost in 3 dimensions, and the sharp detail and freckles on the Hawkfish- wow, just love it. That translucent squirt is something else again. The quality of these pics deserve to be in a publication man. You should be writing a photo-book- reefs of PNG or some such.
Mad Dog,
Your front yard pics are brilliant! love the reflections over the water.
My oh my…the creatures in these pics are amazing. Another great treat for the eyes – Mad Dog’s eye candy…yippeee
Cheers
Agree with Tris, you should publish a book of all the marine pics you’ve taken over the years. I’ll buy a couple and that’s a fact!
Thanks, Tris. You’ve been putting up some fantastic stuff yourself. Man, how do you get WordPress to feature you? Are you in a “realtionship” with someone there?
I’m still waiting to be discovered. If my new job with Pacific Island’s Press as an editor works out, there may be a coffee-table book this year. They’ve been hinting at it for over a year now. Now that they’ve hired J&E Enterprises Limited (our new comapny) to edit the magazines, I’ll maybe have some pull.
Keep your fingers crossed for us. One hand only should be sufficient.
Thanks, Mari. You are a favourite fan – so easy to please. I always feel good when I know that I’ve tickled you.
Ah, yes. It is so true. I should, by all rights, be famous. Alas, I’ve not yet been discovered. I may try to talk my new boss into publishing all of my previous magazine articles into a book. I’ll let you know. Thanks for the lift, dear.