East of the Equator

The underwater cameras have gotten some pretty heavy use recently - so much so that my camera died and is being sent back.  To keep me in action over the next two months, Lizz kindly lent me her Olympus Stylus Tough to use until I can get a warranty replacement.  Now I can continue the search for new sea creatures to identify!  

Essentially, we see [or hear] something underwater that looks interesting or moves from its camouflage, snap a few pictures and then go back to look it up in our reef series ID books.  That is how we [Lizz] found this rare harlequin filefish, the sapo bacon toadfish [Alan], and the tiny pygmy octopus [Lizz] living in a conch shell!  Okay at least, I found the big octopus by noticing a trail of empty shells leading to his coral hole.

Before my camera died, I was still experimenting with getting clear, interesting pictures (those tiny shrimp remain good subjects for this challenge).  Dive weights help keep me underwater and stationary for extended periods to get the close-ups (don't forget to come up for air).  I don't like to use the flash a lot, since it tends to overexpose and create shadows.  Bright sun is the best solution to that, but hasn't always been reliable this season.  

I also do a fair amount of photo processing, mostly cropping to compose pictures that best suit the eye.  I recently switched from iPhoto to Adobe Lightroom for processing, getting rid of the last remnants of iLife after dropping iWeb for the website when Apple pulled MobileMe out from under it.  It turns out that Lightroom is very similar to iPhoto so it was an easy transition.  As I learned in the jungle with all of those cameras to experiment with, processing pictures for the final product is just as much fun as taking them!