From imagination to image
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This just goes to show you that in the fish world like in the bird world the male is the flashier of the two. The females are a uniform brown with white spots while the guys are dark blue and have orange markings across the back and eyes. We saw many more of the females than males
Canon 50D, Canon 24-105L f/4.0, Ewa Marine underwater housing.
Tags: Boxfish, Hawai'i, Kahalu'u Beach, Kona, male, Snorkeling, Vacation
We saw this little guy as we were walking around the condo area in Kona. He didn’t sit still for long, but I was faster than he was in this case. And he didn’t try to sell me any insurance either!
During the snorkeling tour with Liam and Sea Quest Adventures we made a stop at “Turtle Reef”, a quiet section of shore where the water was clear down to at least 100 feet. Of course it was one of those things we just hoped to do was to see a green sea turtle. This was the only one we saw on the snorkel tour but we found about 6 more before the trip was over.
Canon 50D in a Ewa-Marine housing. Canon 580EX flash, Canon 24-105L f/4.0 lens at 24mm
Our first day in Kona we took a snorkel tour with Sea Quest Adventures, our captain Liam and his assistant Abby. It was an awesome 5 hour tour he took us to snorkel in 3 spots, the last being the Captain Cook Monument. We went out in an inflatable which allowed Liam to take us to places we couldn’t otherwise if we took one of the bigger boats – in and out of the little sea arch formations and close to the beaches. At the monument the water was clear 100 feet down making me wish I dove (perhaps my next “thing”!), but this was a very shallow area of the reef right near the monument itself and there was more live coral and colorful fish than we’ve ever seen snorkeling in the Caribbean Sea.
The image was taken with my 50D on SRAW2, 24-105L f/4.0 lens in the Ewa-Marine Housing. Post processing in photoshop included color correction, using Nik Plugins and Tony Kuypers luminosity masks and sharpening.
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A trio of Convict Tang’s (Convict Surgeonfish) working the rocks off Po’ipu beach. About a year and a half ago I bought a Ewa-Marine housing for my camera, I’d only used it once before and that time I almost broke my nose (don’t ask) with it. It was indispensible this trip, although it did take some getting used to. I used my Canon 50D in the housing with the 24-105L f/4 lens and the 580EX flash. The problem with the flash was that there was often lots of particulate matter in the water and the directly above the lens mounting of the flash reflected a lot of the light right back into the camera. On later days snorkeling I often left it turned off.
Tags: Canon 24-105L f/4, Canon 50D, Convict Tang, Ewa Marine U-BXP, Snorkeling
If you’re from Rhode Island the idea of driving from Providence to Warwick means you need to pack a lunch and maybe make hotel reservations to stay overnight…for a 20 minute drive. No, seriously. It does. People from RI don’t drive far, a 3o minute commute is almost unheard of and I’ve had patients leave my practice because they’ve moved to the next town over (but yes, they come back after the first few visits to a new dentist, and complain about how long it takes to get there). So when I showed up at work on Tuesday with a thumbdrive full of butterfly pictures did I get oohs and ah’s? Only after I was roundly berated for driving 2 hours through beautiful country (well except maybe for Worcester) to get to Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory. I’ve been bugging Mike (:P) for about 6 months to go up there and I think he finally got tired of my nagging to go with me. We had an awesome time, even if the butterflies had it in for him, mobbing him to the point of irritation (they liked his lotion apparently). It also was a great opportunity to play with the new 5DMII and I went armed with a backup battery and 2 extra cards since I was going to shoot full raw (21mb) instead of sraw1 that I had been doing and I wanted to see how good it looked.
The place is awesome, unfortunately the sun wasn’t out for most of the day so the light was not great, very diffuse and required use of my 580EX flash, which I really need to get more proficient in use with anyhow. The low light also allowed me to really see what was true or not true about the low noise at higher ISO. And…it’s true, it’s true.
A Swallowtail Butterfly (I don’t know what sub-species, didn’t take the card to identify them like I should have) at ISO 800, no flash, 98mm f/9:
And this is the 10% crop to show the detail in the wing:
I’m impressed. The only work done to the image was in LR2 adjusting the exposure, the black point and brightness and a touch of sharpness with smart sharpen in CS4 and my sig. There is noise, no doubt but it’s less than I see sometimes when I use ISO200 on my 30D, and the resolution. Oi! I’ve been in heaven working on these images. I don’t know if I can afford to shoot full raw all the time, it chews up a 16G CF card pretty quickly and even with 2.5TB of backup hard drive space they are hogs. I suppose I could be much better in just deleting the raw files I don’t plan on using but I just feel like I never know what might strike my fancy in times to come.
Owl’s Eye Butterfly:
Tags: 580EX Flash, 800 ISO, Canon 5DMII, High ISO, Image Processing, Low Light, Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory
I loved Moab, don’t get me wrong, but I missed some things that week I was out there, things that I won’t take for granted for a while. Humidity was one, crazy as that might seem. Green growing things was another, and the things that go with them. It’s taken 2 weeks before I could pick up my camera again, shooting dawn to dusk for 6 days straight wore me out, but today was glorious and the honeybee’s were just digging the flowers that are blooming behind my deck. I think the flowers are gaillardia but I can’t remember what I planted. What ever they are the bee’s are just flocking to them:
A sweat bee:
And honey bees
And we are still working on the Moab website, we’ve got the images culled now it’s just the “dirty” work.
Tags: image, Photography
This is an Eastern Collared Lizard sunning on a rock along Scenic Byway 128 — right outside of Moab. Although these lizards pack a strong bite, they are actually very well mannered and often kept as pets. They prefer temperatures above 100 degrees F, so I guess your heating bill would be very large!
Tags: Eastern Collared Lizard, Moab, Utah