Yesterday, I dumped a bunch of images on your screen that I’m preparing for an article for Niugini Blue  magazine. The title will be Heart of the Hunter. Look back at my post from yesterday to read all of my blather about that.

Today, we’ll just look at some of the rest of the images that I’m submitting.

You’ve seen the Spotted Shrimpgoby (Amblyeleotris guttata)  here before. I’ve even managed to get shots showing the commensal shrimp that lives in the same burrow. I spent about fifteen minutes sneaking up on this scene to get the fish along with two  of the  shrimps Alpheus ochrostriatus:

The timing here is very tricky. I could see that there were two shrimps living with the fish in the burrow, but it took a lot of patience to wait until both of them came out at once, pushing sand in front of them as if they were tiny bulldozers. The Spotted Shrimpgoby appeared previously here and here. If you get too close or make a sudden move, they all pop back in the hole in a flash.

Stalking relatively immobile critters is easier.  You’ve seen this nudibranch (Notodoris minor)  here before several times (put notodoris in the search box):

In this shot, I think I’ve finally figured out how to get the subtle bumps and curves of the body of the beastie to show clearly. The thing is so bright and so monochromatic that you can’t really see this much detail with the naked eye. It’s an interesting example of how a photographic image can show you details that you can’t see with your eyes. Underwater, this critter looks pretty much like a blob of bright yellow with black stripes. It’s very hard to make out any detail.

I shot this image of the Spotted Porcelain Crab (Neopetrolisthes maculata)  a couple of years ago with my previous UW camera, an Olympus C8080:

Though there a lot of variables that I can’t account for, it’s still interesting to compare the Olympus shot with this one of the same species shot last week with my current outfit, a Canon G10:

As I said, there are too many variables to make a direct comparison, but it certainly looks as if I’ve lost nothing in the change.

This shot of a Spotted Garden Eel (Heteroconger hassi)  is one that I must admit makes me feel almost like a pro:

It’s not so much that it’s technically perfect – it isn’t. However, if you understand the behaviour of these eels, you will appreciate how difficult it is to get a good, clear close-up. The garden eel is usually found in mobs sticking up out of the sand. That’s all well and good – and quite pretty. However, when you approach them, they all pull back down into their holes; it’s their best defense. To get this close to one requires Job-like patience and a full tank of air. I cheated a little by easing a bit of telephoto into my lens, something which is normally useless underwater, since there is always too much stuff floating around.  I also had to do an enlargement trick (the multiple 110% enlargement method, in case you’re a Photoshop fan) to get the image big enough to crop out the middle and still have good detail. I’d guess that the front of my camera was about a half-metre from the eel.

Look, he’s winking at me.

If you are a long-time reader, you know that I am loath to throw an image away. If I go to all the trouble to get out on the boat, put on all that gear (which is becomming steadily more burdensome year-by-by-year), and fin around for an hour or so snapping pictures of anything that moves and much that doesn’t, then I reckon that even a less than technically acceptable shot deserves a few minutes to see if it can be revived.

I give a poor, but promising image ten minutes. If it still doesn’t amuse me, then I let it go back into the black hole of the tens of thousands of images that I’ll probably never touch again. Here’s a good example. These are Pickhandle Barracuds (Sphyraena qenie)  at about thirty metres on the bottom of Magic Passage:

The water was fairly clear, but it was dark there, so I had to make up much of the colour from memory. Since I hate the flashy thing, the deeper I go, the more I have to make up. It ends up being less a photograph and more a funky bit of art.

Here is a mob of Spotted Garden Eels (Heteroconger hassi)  at about thirty-five metres, right at the mouth of the passage. It’s nearly monochrome, but you do get the impression of the wavy critters swaying in the current nabbing tasty bits as they float past:

You probably know by now that the sub-adult Silver Sweetlips (Diagramma pictum)  is one of my favourites. They were born to pose. I sanpped this shot as a throw-away, because the current was quite strong and I was kicking like a mad man to reach the mouth of the passage. When I looked at the shot on the computer, my compassion overflowed and I spent a while massaging it. That seems to have breathed some life back into it:

While we’re on Sweetlips, I’ll toss out a couple of others. This is the Oriental Sweetlips (Plectorhinchus vittatus),  a sub-adult. The adults have many more horizontal bands much closer together. It would be a perfectly good shot, if I hadn’t amputated part of its tail:

I did seriously consider skipping this next one, because it was so horrible that I didn’t think I could make anything of it. This is a bit rarer type of Sweetlips in these parts and it’s difficult to get close to them. I did this at full telephoto on the Canon G10 and it shows the woes of being too far away underwater. The UW photographer’s mantra is, “The closer, the better.” This one is a Diagonal-Banded Sweetlips (Plectorhinchus lineatus).  They are very handsome fish. Too bad this is the best shot of one that I’ve yet managed:

Another surprisingly difficult fish to make into digital bits for your camera is the Trumpetfish (Aulostomus chinensis):

This also was a snap-shot. The Trumpet fish is, I’m certain, psychic. I don’t believe for a nanosecond in human psychics – please, don’t get me started. But the Trumpetfish knows when you are just about to push the shutter release and moves, qhite gracefully (grinning, I’m sure) just out of range. The only way you can get a clean shot is to see one in the distance, get behind some blob of coral or rock, sneak up close and then pop up like a tank-killer helicopter and kick loose a round.

It seldom works. Oh, I forgot to mention that you have to hold your breath while you’re doing all that.