Deep Blue Divers | 2019 June Highlights

Have you ever seen a manta mating train? Our June highlights video features footage of this amazing phenomenon where females gracefully swoop and do barrel rolls to see which males are able to keep up with her. Enjoy as well the chilled-out turtles, sharks and eagle rays who also filled our dives with joy this month!

Scuba diving in the Maldives in Laamu atoll is very special – since there are no other dive operators or liveaboards around we almost guaranteed have the dive site for ourselves.

Music by Nacho Sotomayor www.nachosotomayor.com | Shot on a Canon C200 in a Nauticam housing.

Critters of the Lembeh Strait | SEA WARS – Blue-ring Octopus

Did you know that the deadly, highly venomous blue-ring octopus cannot tell the sex of another blue-ring at first sight? They have to feel the other one first in order to be able to figure it out. An encounter can be witnessed in this video where two blue-ring octopuses (Hapalochlaena sp.) meet each other for the first time. Love at first sight or disaster date? Watch to find out!

 

Critters of the Lembeh Strait | SEA WARS – The Frogfish Strikes Again

Frogfishes are a member of the anglerfish family and eat pretty much everything, shrimps, fish and even other frogfish. The strike itself is accomplished with the sudden opening of the jaws, which enlarges the size of the mouth up to 12 times, pulling the prey into the mouth along with water. The water flows out through the gills, while the prey is swallowed and the food pipe closed with a special muscle to keep the victim from escaping. In addition to expanding their mouths, frogfish can also expand their stomachs to swallow animals up to twice their size.

Critters of the Lembeh Strait | Eat dessert first

This little clown frogfish (Antennarius maculatus) obviously did not eat his dessert first! Frogfish tend not to be picky eaters and have been known to eat just about any creature that is close enough and that will fit in their mouth (including other frogfishes of the same species) but this shrimp seemed to not suit his palate. It’s anyone’s guess as to why he spit it out – did he eat the good parts and expel only the hard shell? Was it an awkward shape and difficult to swallow? What do you think?

Critters of the Lembeh Strait | Episode 10 – 2016 | September Highlights

We guarantee you have never before seen some of the crazy critter action featured in this week’s video; have you ever seen a video close up of the eye of an elegant sand diver? No? What about this eye with a shrimp on it? Didn’t think so. This and many more bizarre and beautiful surprises in this will make you wish you were here. What was your favorite part?

Critters of the Lembeh Strait | Episode 09 – 2016 | August Highlights

This time of year often brings slightly cooler water temperatures in Lembeh and to our delight, we’ve noticed many more baby frogfishes are around than normal. Coincidence? We think not! Some of these ultra-cute froggies are in this video as well as footage of rare nudis like the Phyllodesmium koehleri and one of the weirdest, most unusual critters we’ve ever seen – a bizarre polychaete worm (Diopatra Sp.) that looks like a cross between a bobbit worm and a furry-legged bristle worm! Enjoy this up-to-the-minute glimpse of what’s going on in Lembeh.

Move you strobe(s) or Light(s) around

I see it all the time. Photographers don’t even touch their strobes for a whole dive, or even worse, for all their dives. But it’s so easy to get different results when we move our lights around. Macro lighting is quite easy, yet still complex. We can change the look of an image a lot by just changing our strobe position(s). There is no one recipe for good results, it all depends on the situation. Play with the shadows and see what you like best.

Sometimes I like to create strong shadows, this often works better with only using one source of light (strobe or continuous light).

Take this example of a frogfish here in Lembeh. I didn’t change the position or settings on the camera, I only used one light (1x SOLA 4000), but I still got many different images of the same subject just by moving the light around.

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Painted frogfish lit up from the top left. This is an example of fairly standard lighting.


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Painted frogfish lit up from the left. Note how it is very similar to the one above, but the tail of the frogfish is not lit up.


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Painted frogfish lit up from the top left but this time I positioned the light further behind the subject to get a backlighting effect.


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Painted frogfish lit up from the bottom right – the coral makes a nice shadow on the body and only a tiny bit of the frogfish gets illuminated. That gives a nice spooky effect.


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Some more examples of the same frogfish. It’s up to you which one you like best. There is no right or wrong!

You can also watch the video how I shot the frogfish here:


When will you start moving your strobe(s)/light(s)?