Once again, I’m left dead for a theme. Succumbing to writer’s block is not something to be enjoyed. It’s not part of my game to simply throw out a bunch of images with no comment. However, today the words are getting stuck somewhere. Maybe I can shake a few loose. It’s a sure formula for gibberish.

We’ll start with the standard ‘my house’ sunrise:

Hmmmm . . . That wasn’t so bad. Let’s move along.

This is a bit more interesting. On the way to the office a couple of days ago there was a fellow paddling up the coast in his canoe just off of Coronation Drive:At the far right, on the horizon, you can see the tail end of the Huon Peninsula  and the last of the Finisterre Mountains.  The towering cumulus clouds that you can see below the overcast are probably much more than 100 kilometres in the distance.

Now, here is a shot that I really enjoy. On our way back from Blueblood on Christmas Day, Kar Kar Island  was looking very splendid and mysterious:I caught Mike Cassell’s boat Felmara flying up the coast toward Madang with the island looming in the background about fifty clicks away. It makes a rather dramatic image.

Here is the standard Coconut Point sunrise, which you have seen here many times before:

I’m puzzled by the dark streak in the sky. It was persistent, pronounced and quite straight. We do not see aircraft condensation trails here in the tropics, or at least we rarely see them. I cannot remember seeing one in all the years that I’ve lived in Madang. My guess is that it’s a combination of factors. First, we are not under any heavily travelled routes. Another thing is that the air above us is generally too warm to form lasting condensation trails except at extreme altitudes. My best guess is that the dark line is a shadow of an invisible trail of condensation between the sun and the high layer of clouds.

Hey, it’s just a guess.

Here is something that I don’t think that you’ve seen before on Madang – Ples Bilong Mi  – an image of Bag Bag Island:It is further away from Madang than Kar Kar Island  and considerably less mountainous. I had a lot of trouble with the colour of the island itself. It was far too blue. While trying to get it right, I ran out of time. It looks a little odd – like a pile of dust, not like an island.

Finally, here is an image that gives me a chuckle:It’s not a particularly good image; the Orangefinned Anemonefish is out of focus, as is my hand. However it does bring to mind the friendly, feisty anemonefish of The Eel Garden  near Pig Island.  I have done hundreds of dives in this small area and I know every knob of coral and every fish. I do not understand the behaviour of these anemonefish, but it amuses me greatly. They seem to know me!  Yes, I know that is absurd, but there is something  odd going on. At several specific and consistent anemones, the fish will come up and rub against my fingers and nip at them. The nipping I get. Many anemonefishes do this. They are absolutely fearless, as if nipping at a giant predator would drive it away!

These, however, seem to ‘enjoy’ rubbing gently against my fingertips. It’s positively disconcerting. If they weren’t so cute, it would be a little creepy. In the shot above, I was attempting to get a record of the behaviour. As it turns out, it’s easier contemplated than accomplished. You may be amused to see another of the Damselfish family (as are the Anemonefishes) nipping away at my hand.

I’ll start today with a couple of images that I got a few nights ago when I was trying to capture lightning in a thunderstorm. Here is an amusing image of a boat tied up at the south side of the compound near the airport. You can see the lights of the airport glowing in the distance and off of the bottoms of the nearby low clouds. The lighting on the boat and the fence and trees is from the main wharf which is at least a half-kilometre away:

The shot took fifteen seconds to expose. You can see a bit of motion blur on the boat, as it was bobbing around in the gentle waves.

This is the only shot of the thunderstorm that showed any lightning. My Canon G9 only allows up to fifteen second exposures. I wish I could get a full minute out of it. There wasn’t enough lightning in this cloud to make more than one or two flashes in fifteen seconds. This was the best shot that I got. I’m going to try again soon:

Strangely, this year has been almost absent of thunderstorms.

Here is a shot of Coconut point in the morning sun. I got this one on the drive into town a couple of days ago:

It’s not a bad sunrise shot, but not as spectacular as some. What is interesting is that I accidentally caught a mob of Flying Foxes returning to town after there night-time raid on the gardens. You might have to click to enlarge to see them.

I got some nice images last Sunday on the way back from Blueblood on Mike Cassell’s boat, Felmara.  Here is a shot into the lowering sun with the Canon G9 set with the Night Snapshot scene setting and the flash forced on: I really enjoy having specific settings on the camera in the form of Scenes. It takes care of most of the adjustments that you need for particular shooting conditions. I could have recreated this shot using manual settings, but I would have to think a lot more. With the G9 I simply had to set the camera on Scenes, choose the Night Snapshot by spinning the wheel until it appeared on the screen, push the flash control until I could see that it was on demand and fire away.

This strange apparition is a lenticular cap on a Cumulonimbus cloud:

The cloud (called a pileus [Latin for cap] – thanks, Steve Goodheart) is rising up so quickly into the upper atmosphere that it is pushing warmer, moister air above it in a sort of shock wave. The warm, moist air can’t get out of the way, so it gets moved up to colder regions and the water in the air condenses into a small lens-shaped cloud that sits on top of the thunderstorm. There was much more of a rainbow effect visible to the naked eye. I couldn’t capture those nuances with the camera.

Though a US$4,000 camera and lens could do a much better job on this very technically demanding shot, for US$400, I’m quite happy with what my Canon G9 gave me:

The problem here is what is called dynamic range. I don’t know what the real numbers are, but I’d guess that there is at least 100,000 times as much light in the sun glowing through the thin cloud layer than there is in the trees in the foreground. The little sensors in point and shoot camera simply cannot handle this difference. So, everything gets compressed into a smaller range.

However, the technical aspects of this shot are not what I’m thinking of now. What I am thinking of is the gift that I got when the opportunity arose. There was a good deal of luck involved. Felmara  was moving at a rapid pace. I was shooting a medium telephoto shot from a bouncing boat. I had maybe a one-tenth of a second window for the shot.

Luck was with me.