Every time we go underwater, life and death struggles happen
all around us, whether we see them or not. Usually when we think of
predators, we think only of sharks. But
that’s just the tip of the food chain iceberg. Everything down there is feeding on something
else. And the vast majority of these
life and death struggles happen on a scale so small that it’s easy to swim right by them without even noticing. Here are a few
shots of animals a little further down on the food chain caught in the act of making
a meal of one another.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Surface Intervals
One of the best things about diving is how much time you get
to spend on, in, or near the water, in between the times you’re under it. Let’s face it, everything’s better by the
water, including photography. Here are a
bunch of shots taken before, after, or in between dives.
This was shot after an early AM dive in
Virginia. There was almost nothing
happening underwater so I was pretty happy to come out and find such a
beautiful scene on the beach.
I took this after an evening dive at
Nahant. This little park looking back
toward Boston is about a mile from Canoe Beach.
I photographed these surf casters on the same
morning as shot # 1 above.
For me, one of the big differences between surface and
underwater photography is the requisite shape of the photo. I’m not sure why but when I take a shot
underwater, even if I crop it, I want it to maintain its original
shape and proportions. Not so with
surface shots. For reasons that I again
don’t understand, when I take a shot on the surface, I have no compunction whatsoever
about cropping it any way I want – which usually means taking something off the
top and bottom and ending up with a longer, narrower photo. I’d love to feel the freedom to do the same
with underwater shots. Maybe
someday. This one was taken at sunrise
before heading out to dive in the St. Lawrence up in Quebec.
Since it’s the dive that dictates when you get to the water,
you can’t always set things up to shoot on either side of sunrise and
sunset. Again, though, everything’s
better by the water, regardless of time of day, even shots like this late
morning one taken at Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester.
Ditto for this afternoon shot taken in fairly harsh sunlight
after a dive on the Cape.
Of course, I had to include at least one night shot. I came out of the water after an early
evening dive at Back Beach in Rockport and found the sidewalk crowded with
people waiting to see the moon rise up over Bearskin Neck. It turned out it was the super full moon –
the night when the moon is at its closest point to the Earth for that calendar
year. I went back to dive again the next
night and made sure to bring a tripod. I
grabbed this shot almost as soon as I came out of the water.
Friday, July 25, 2014
Black & White
You don't see a lot of black and white shots taken underwater. And for good reason -- they don't really work. At least not for me. I'm not sure why since the early attempts at black and white photography underwater, say, everything from William Beebe's pre-Great Depression shots, all the way up through Cousteau's and Hans Hass's stuff in the 50s and early 60s, is just fantastic. But a lot of that is probably due to their historical significance. Black and white shots taken underwater nowadays, though, tend to strike me as gimmicky. Again, just my opinion.
That being said, when I felt like trying something different earlier this week, processing a few recent shots as black and white seemed like the thing to do. And what better subject than nudibranchs -- animals known for their beautiful colors. I guess what I wanted to see was whether stripping them of those colors would make it easier to focus on something else, something like form, function, maybe texture.
So I spent a few hours dodging and burning, applying overlays and whatnot, things I never usually do. I can't say that the monochromatic results have brought out anything in them for me that's otherwise obscured by color. But I'll give them some time and space, take another look in a month or so -- see if anything jumps out.
That being said, when I felt like trying something different earlier this week, processing a few recent shots as black and white seemed like the thing to do. And what better subject than nudibranchs -- animals known for their beautiful colors. I guess what I wanted to see was whether stripping them of those colors would make it easier to focus on something else, something like form, function, maybe texture.
So I spent a few hours dodging and burning, applying overlays and whatnot, things I never usually do. I can't say that the monochromatic results have brought out anything in them for me that's otherwise obscured by color. But I'll give them some time and space, take another look in a month or so -- see if anything jumps out.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Eastport Photos
Just got back from a couple of weeks of diving in Eastport, Maine. The diving itself was great; photographically, though, not so much. Here are a few of the shots.
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Nudibranch attacking a hydroid. What I like are the colors and how uncluttered it feels. |
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Just a nudibranch moving over a timber but I backed off a bit so you can see more of the surrounding area. |
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Wolffish are just so beautifully ugly. |
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Here's a nudibranch laying out an egg string. You can see the eggs just starting to pile up on the stalk of the hydroid. There's nothing in the shot to give a sense scale but the nudibranch was huge. |
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Dawson Street – Eastport, Maine


The hard part for me, as always, is
swimming over the rock fields. My
tendency is to pass over them quickly but, like most places that aren’t
obviously interesting, I have to keep telling myself that I don’t necessarily know what's
there. It's not so much a lesson that I keep forgetting, but one that just never really sinks in. And sure enough, found a beautiful
brittle star out and about on the rocks
. You really do have to slow down and keep your eyes open. Excellent dive.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Custom House Beach – Deer Island, New Brunswick


Despite the storm,
though, dive conditions have ranged from good to fantastic. And today was on the fantastic end, with viz
in the 25- to 30-foot range. As always,
tons of life – northern reds, scuplin, nudis, wolfish, moon jellies. Didn’t want to come out of the water. If this isn’t one of the premier dive sites
on the east coast, then I don’t know what is.
The only real downer for me has been the
universal lack of reaction up here in the great white north to my Bruins
hat. There’s been no hassling, no
gnashing of teeth, no annoyed comments. They didn't even insist on a search going through customs. After the Bruins’ chicken sh*t loss to Montreal in the playoffs, they’ve
returned to near irrelevance up here.
Well, what are you going to do. Time
to go carve some urchin spines out of my knee.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Later (part deux)
Just a few weeks after clearing out my "Later" folder (http://shinesdiveblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/later.html), it's filling back up again. Already there are more than 500 new shots in there. Arghhh! It might be time to just get rid of that folder and actually deal with images as they come in. At least it's recent enough that I still have some recollection of taking these shots.
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