Northwest Dive Club

Hello all, I've been a little back logged in my photos. I still have a lot to get through from June/July :-) Here are a few cool sequences I captured at Sund Rock a few weeks ago. The first is my favorite. It is an 11 photo sequence of a Giant Nudibranch crawling across my mirror and over to a tube-dwelling anemone. I captured the GN, plunging into the anemone to get some lunch. If you have never witnessed this live, it is pretty cool.











Here it is almost off my mirror as it senses the anemone and rears up for the attack.








It misses....


But recovers!


I will post a few more sequences soon.

Here is a nice little Striped Nudibranch that I watch for a good 5+ minutes. I had to crawl onto my mirror and did a nice turn move :-)

Penders challenged me to get a Squat Lobster to move onto my mirror. Holy smokes did this test my patience :-)











He also said "bet you cant's get a Goby. Well kind of

Very happy with this beautiful Yellow Rimmed Nudibranch. Only got 3 of this one though.

Finally, got 3 different 5 sequence shots of several Warbonnets. Click on each to see the sequence.

Warbonnet #1


Warbonnet #2


Warbonnet #3

Great shots ! How do you keep the mirror so clean ?

WOW!

Jan K wrote:Great shots ! How do you keep the mirror so clean ?

Great question Jan. A couple techniques. Before placing the mirror I give it a little shake to get the dirt off. After the critter is on the mirror, I developed a little hand wave technique (very difficult in dry gloves) to remove particles, If the critter is securely on the mirror I can gently raise the mirror and move it back and forth to get debris off. I also purposefully slightly underexpose the shot. This allows me to raise the exposure on the critter while keeping the background dark (which helps eliminate the backscatter). There are a couple shots that are really tough (like the squat lobster) where I do extra work to remove backscatter. It is tedious and I do not mind removing small particles, since it is a "creative" shot any way. On a lot of my other shots (Warbonnets in cloud sponges), I work really hard to do little to no post processing.

Next time we dive together, I will bring my mirror and we can mess around with it. It is fun, but pretty time consuming. It does give me something new to shoot :-)

Those shots are so cool!

Thanks for the tips.
I carry mirror in my car, but it has been a while since I shot with it, I was more interested in the critter reaction to seeing image of itself.
Only one Painted greenling got worked up over seeing a "rival" in its territory.

Jan K wrote:Thanks for the tips.
I carry mirror in my car, but it has been a while since I shot with it, I was more interested in the critter reaction to seeing image of itself.
Only one Painted greenling got worked up over seeing a "rival" in its territory.

True, some critters freak out about it and other are okay with it :-) That is for sure. It is something different to try.

Very cool! The gn's in particular!

Wow cant believe you got that squat to squat like that!

Great shots Jesse!!

7 Shot sequence of a Leopard Dorid.

I like this one too. It's a 5 shot sequence of a baby shaggy mouse.











I have a few sequences from Blakely Rock I will share soon.

60south wrote:WOW!

Thanks 60south. Appreciate the shout out

Nwbrewer wrote:Those shots are so cool!

Thanks NWB.

YellowEye wrote:Very cool! The gn's in particular!

Wow cant believe you got that squat to squat like that!

Yeah thanks. Super stoked on the GN. Haven't seen one munch on an anemone in almost 2 years.

bradmond wrote:Great shots Jesse!!

Thanks B-man. Haven't seen you in a while, hope you're doing well.

Scubie Doo wrote:

bradmond wrote:Great shots Jesse!!

Thanks B-man. Haven't seen you in a while, hope you're doing well.

Doing good, hope we can hook up soon.

Holy epic squat lobster shots!!! You are so cool!!! Great work all around! Hope to see you at a ThThTh soon!

Wonderful captures!

beautiful!! I'm in love with these!

Awesome work Scubie. Love the GN, WB and SL. I'd like to catch one of those GN sequences on video one day, sans the mirror. :-)

Another 9 shot sequence of a dime-sized Mosshead Warbonnet.