Dive 4-10-2011 Busy, Busy, Busy
Probably my favorite shot of the year so far.
Well, not much to report, except I haven’t been in front of the computer much lately. Well, except for work, which has been very, very busy. I’ve been putting in a lot of hours the last few weeks, and while this week has been relatively quiet, I have a feeling that the next three will be pretty reckless. It’s good to be busy though.
Add to that the fact the the weather has been beautiful… Well the old computer starts to seem awfully unattractive in my off hours. When I do have down time, I find myself watching an episode or two of MASH. What a great show. I’ve been watching it for a while now, and I have been pleased to find flashes of absolute brilliance written into it. For example, in season 4, episode 18, Hawkeye launches into a wonderful monologue where he picks up a hunk of garlic, a tea cup, and a stone. He begins to juggle. He says:
“I give you the human person, thumb and fingers, flexing madly, straining to keep aloft the leaden realities of life; ignorance, death, and madness. Thus we create for ourselves the illusion that we have power, that are in control, that we are…. loved.”
He stops juggling as he catches the garlic. Later as he leaves, the family at whose house he is staying offers him the three items he was juggling as a gift. He takes the garlic and hands it back to the woman and he says pensively “the love, I leave with you”, and steps out the door.
Tiny, tiny shrimp on the tip of my glove.
Anyways, on to the photos. I caught a shot of a new nudibranch this week, which I was very excited about. I also got a really great shot of a diver swimming to the surface, probably my favorite shot of the year so far. The most fun shot of the week award goes to the macro shot of a tiny, almost microscopic shrimp on the very tip of my glove. It was swimming past me, and looked like a self-propelled particle in the water. I reached out to touch it having no idea what it was), and it climbed on to my glove, quickly making itself at home.
I named him Fred. Fred was kind enough to model for me, and I saw him safely on his way before getting back into the boat.
Well, that’s it for this week. As always, enjoy the photos!
Dive 4-2-2011 – Spring Is Here!
The triptérygions changed their colors for spring
Spring is officially here in Nice. The sun was shining, the triptérygions changed their colors for spring, and the sun bathers reappeared this weekend. You can feel it in the air, happy times are here again.
It was a really good weekend for photos. For the first time, I feel like I am starting to get better at using my strobe light with my photography. This is especially evident with my macro work. My super macro shots came out extremely clean and crisp with colors that really pop. The only issue I am coming across is that I am getting many photos with details that are often washed out. This comes with me dumping so much light on the subject. Next up will be some research on how to avoid this.
Other than that, it was a fun dive this morning, with lot of strange critters about. There were some new ones that I have yet to identify, and there was another that can be seen quite often that exhibited some behavior I had never seen; it formed a giant rope-like colony with many individuals stuck together. It was something to see.
Hope it feels like spring wherever you are. Enjoy the shots.
Weekend 10-10-2010
My favorite shot from the past couple weeks
For all those who have been bugging me, sorry it took so long to get these up. I’ve been in an odd mode lately. I have been a schizophrenic melange of extremely overbusy/super lazy. When I have not been busting my tail with some household or work project, I have been a crazy couch potato. I think it is a combination of my U.S. trip, and winter creeping in that has my energies so messed up.
Anyways, nothing really new beyond that. I have some shots from club dives through the last couple weekends, and I wanted to get those up before people start getting mad at me. I had one or two pretty nice shots that I liked quite a bit from the last couple weeks, as well a bunch of other so-so shots.
That’s Show Biz Baby!
Well, TF1 sent over a camera crew a few weeks ago to film our club (the CIPA) and Guillaume Nery. They filmed for about 3 hours and took a ton of footage. We were pretty excited that everyone from our club were going to get onto french TV. As it turns out, once the story aired, they only aired approximately 4 seconds of the footage from our little sortie. The whole segment was about Guillaume and his freediving the Dean’s Blue Hole clip. As disappointing as it was, Guillaume is a truly exceptional diver, and he deserves the limelight.
As it was, I showed off the clip to my parents and told them about how I was in the background somewhere during the 4 seconds of footage. We had a good laugh when we saw it. I guess that’s just how it works sometimes. As they say, that’s show biz, baby.
The actual footage is below. You can see the members of our club for just a second on the surface of the water just after the jellyfish swims by.
Weekend 8-1-2010 Apnea Diving with the CIPA
Freediving in Villefranche
Well, I as in northern France all last week for a buddy’s birthday bash so I didn’t get a chance to update my photos from last week. I’ll post them in two updates, since I kind of had two different themes going on last weekend. The first half was pretty heavy free diving, and the second was mostly practicing my macro techniques as you will see in the next post. If my photos from this week look an awful lot like the ones from my last batch, they are. I had so much fun a few weeks ago, that I decided to go visit the exact same spots and do the exact things again. This first batch is the freediving part, taken in two sessions at Villefranche.
Weekend 7-24-2010
Monopalm coolness
Well, this weekend was a get-back-to normal weekend after the big vacation to Corsica, and so I decided to get back to the old freediving club. I hadn’t been out with the club since about mid May, and I figured it was about time to actually do some serious training. My intentions were good, but after 2 warm up dives of less than 20 meters, I found myself snap, snap, snapping away. I ended up taking a bunch of shots between the 10-15 meter mark, and never ended up getting any deep water work in. It was great nonetheless, as it gave me a chance to string multiple shallow dives together for the purposes of lining up a shot. Plus, I found some good shooting positions and got some practice in at shooting freedive subjects.
In addition, I went out Sunday and discovered some strange little shrimp or crabs under a rock. They were so small I couldn’t even tell what they were with the naked eye. All I could see were some little leg-like things waving in the water. I just threw on my dual stacked macro lenses and started shooting, figuring I would be able to tell what exactly it was once I got to shore. I really like the shots, mostly because we can now see details that would not be really possible withouth the camera.
Video of Our Club by Francois Gautier
Below is a video created by Francois Gautier a long-time member of our CIPA (our diving club). I think it’s pretty freakin’ awesome, mostly because I am in it. 
Look for the guy in the wetsuit, and you’ll find me . Anyways, I’d like to give a special thanks to Francois for posting this. To everyone else, I recommend stopping over at his site: OceanColors
CIPA En Hiver by Francois Gautier
See Guillaume Néry, World Record Freediver And President of CIPA
Guillaume Néry
[Update: For those of you looking for where to find Guillaume's Base Jumping Dean's Blue Hole Video, click here]
Guillaume is the President of the CIPA (my diving club), as well as a world champion free diver, recording depths of 113 meters (370 feet). He recently took bronze in the Bahamas at the free diving world championships in the no fins category, achieving a depth of 78 meters (256 feet). The following video is a short preview of a 52 minute documentary on the Orange Sport Channel this year.
I saw it earlier this week, and am really excited to post it, not only because it is pretty cool stuff, but it actually shows my hobby in detail. In it, you can see the beach near my apartment (very beginning), my club, the boat I take for free diving, several members of my club, several people I train and dive with, the places I dive, and even the very set of fins that I bought off one of the members of the club (I bought them off of him after this film was shot). It’s not about me, but the first 5 minutes of the video are really, very close to my life here in Nice. These are the places I go, and many of the people I see. It’s all in french, but for those of you who only speak English, enjoy the pretty scenery!
DEEP BLUE – L’apnée selon Guillaume Néry from Mi Ka on Vimeo.
Update: after the fact, I realized I should put a link to his blog for everyone to check out: http://guillaumenery.over-blog.com/.
