First Dive of the Year
Small anemone crab
Edit: Some browsers might have issues with the photo enlarge and the video on the same page. For now, just scroll down the page when looking at the enlarged photos if you have them layered strangely. I am too tired at this point to deal with it, but will look at it another day.
I know it has been awhile since I have posted anything, but I have been laying low – taking a break from diving. I have been preparing for next spring, selling off most of my photo equipment, and saving up for a new, more professional rig. I am going with the Nikon D90 (yes, I switched teams), with an Ikelite case with 8″ dome and sigma 8-16 mm wide angle lens. My goal is around May to have everything in my possession.
I just got my case the other day, but have to save up a bit more to be able to afford the rest. Well either that, or actually sell my old equipment… I put it up on Ebay last week, but no bites yet.
I had a nice outing today, even though the current was high, and the conditions weren’t ideal. The weather was great. We have had an exceptionally nice winter over here, and it has been a great pleasure to get outdoors – even in January.
I think that my break from diving is a good thing. I have been doing a lot more photo work topside of late, and trying to improve my fundamentals, as well as my post-processing technique. I think it has made a huge difference in my photo work, and I hope we will see the results next summer.
Anyways, I took a short vid of an octopus that I harassed (seen below). Check it out, and enjoy the photos!
Chlorinated Coolness
It’s no secret that swimming pools aren’t really my thing. In my book, they are good for training – that’s about it. Imagine my surprise when I went to the pool with my girlfriend’s niece and nephew and actually had a lot of fun – not to mention the fact that I escaped with a few fun photos!
I originally took my cameras with me simply to do some comparisons between the wide angle capabilities of the two. If you are curious, I got a much wider field of view with my Canon G9 than my D10 with the same wide angle dome (the D10 wide angle dome mount is a bayonet-style mount that I modded myself).
Long story short, I had a blast at the pool and I learned that my girlfriend’s niece is a total ham for the camera. Enjoy the shots.
Close encounters of the silly kind
Making a splash - and bubbles!
Goofiness rules beneath the surface
Learning to swim
Cap du Dramont Photos
“for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it’s always ourselves we find in the sea”
Free Diving at the Cap du Dramont
Free Diving at the Cap du Dramont
Free Diving at the Cap du Dramont
Oh Beautiful Corsica! Recollections From Miomo 5-11.
Miomo, just outside of Bastia, is a pretty little village
A couple weeks ago, my girlfriend and I sneaked away to Miomo, Corscia for a short, but superb four day weekend. We boarded a ferry from the port in Nice, and settled in for a pleasant six hour commute. On the way there, we saw several dolphins playing in the wake of the boat, and reveled in the clear, deep blue of the sea.
The Corsican accent is pretty pronounced, and was at first, difficult to understand. It is a mix of Italian and French accents with a strange emphasis on certain vowels. I am funny with accents, I was told that by the end of our four days, I had begun to pick up the accent when I spoke. That was fine with me. I really grew to like the accent and the people by the time we left.
We stayed at the hotel : l’Ariana in Miomo, and the staff there were wonderful! I don’t usually call out places to stay in my posts, but the staff and the people were a cut above. They were incredibly accommodating and friendly. We passed quite a bit of time with the staff, just chatting, swapping stories and asking questions. If you are looking for great hotel in the area, this is the one. Just try to get a room with a view of the sea. I should also note the hotel itself was great too – featuring a pool, a wonderful bar overlooking the sea, and a pretty good restaurant to boot.
The water was exceptionally clear
I should also call out the little pizzeria down the street too (there is only one, you can’t miss it). The owner there was super nice to us when we arrived after close. He made us two pizzas to go, and packed up a bottle of Rosé, and even borrowed us two glasses so we could picnic on the beach. Thanks for the wonderful service and thoughtfulness! Oh, and the pizzas were great too. I highly recommend the “Miomaise”.
The absolute highlight of the trip was the boat trip back. We saw lots of rare animals and fish, including at least six or seven Mola Mola, or Poisson Lune. We saw more dolphins very close to Nice, a squid, and several whales. One whale surfaced several times very near to the ship, and we got to see it closer than I have ever seen before. It was incredible.
On to the photos. The water was cool and clear. The waters in the area aren’t very deep, so you have to get pretty far from shore in order to do any diving. Shooting conditions were pretty wonderful overall, but I didn’t really find much in the way of subject matter. There were a lot of fish, but they were pretty timid, and I just didn’t find a lot of little critters to shoot. I was hoping for some interesting nudibranch, or flabelline, or shrimp or something, but I searched in vain. We saw lots of things, just nothing terribly unusual. I took advantage of the clear waters to do some live action shots and had some success. I continued to utilize my simulated HDR technique to bring out the detail in the water. You can see the rays of light playing in many of the shots below.
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.
2-12-2011 First Dive of 2011
Small Spider Crab in Anemone
Where to begin? Since my last post plenty of things have changed. I moved out of my new place, made some new friends, got closer to some old friends, and started learning how to live the single life again. I can’t say I’m unhappy, life is too full of wonder to curl up into a ball for too long. At some point you have to start living again. I recently read a quote that I think it sums it up:
“Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence.”
The last five months have been a heck of a ride, and I feel like I’ve finally come out on the other side. That means it is time to get back to what is important: my real work.
This week, I went on a couple dives and managed to FINALLY get a passable picture of a crab in an anemone. These are super hard to shoot, because they usually either hide themselves well, or the anemones are moving around so much that it is hard to focus on the crab itself. In this case, I was lucky enough to get close enough, and catch the crab a bit out in the open. It worked out well I think.
Also, in this week’s shots is the largest Doris Dalmatien that I have ever seen. As I came up on it, it had it’s feeders extended and it looked really impressive, but due to a flash malfunction, I missed the very first shot I took. After that, it closed it’s feeder tuft and became much less impressive. Ahh c’est la vie.
This week’s shots are taken either at the Phare in St.Jean Cap-Ferrat, or at the Cap de Nice.
Enjoy:
12-19-2010 Last Dive Of The Year
Nudibranch
Well, I dove my last dive of the year today, closing the book on an excellent season. My photo work certainly grew by leaps and bounds this last year, and I fully expect next year to be full of growth as well.
I’ll be heading to England over the Christmas holiday, and definitely won’t hit the water until at least the weekend after New Year’s. I guess there is a lot of snow up in England just now, but I am still hopeful it will be a good little vacation. I know everyone says the food isn’t that great up there, but I am looking forward to trying the beef Wellington! Ha.
Anyways, I didn’t take many shots, and there is nothing spectacular in this week’s set, but there is one pretty nice shot of two nudibranch feeding. I’ve never seen two specimens that close before, and it was at least something cool. I didn’t get any time to really shoot them, because it was just at the end of the outing. I had to take a couple of quick shots then roll out. Enjoy, and have a Merry X-mas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Super Kwanzaa, a Bo-Delicious Boxing Day and a Happy New Year!
Dive 11-6
My new shrimp discovery: Crevette drimo
I finally got back to the water after several weeks, and got to work out my new strobe again. I made a few new discoveries, one of which I have yet to identify. The first of these discoveries was a type of shrimp I had never seen before. It was tucked way back in a small crevasse, and I had some serious trouble even getting a shot at it. I did get a couple decent shots, but it took some serious acrobatics on my part to get my equipment even near enough to shoot it. I was able to track the identity down, and it turns out it is a “Crevette drimo” or Mediterranean bumblebee shrimp.
My second big discovery of the day was a type of starfish that I had never seen before, and I cannot identify. It looks much like the “Etoile de mer épineuse”, or Blue Spiny Starfish, but it was quite yellow. Maybe this is a seasonal change, or perhaps a close cousin? I have yet to find out. [Update: shortly after publishing, I was able to track the starfish in question down. Turns out it is a "Eoile de mer glacialis". It is related to the Etiole de mer epineuse. So there you have it.]
One last note, I saw five octopus during my outing, which is a lot. I think that breaks my previous record by at least 2. I saw several different varieties, and got quite close to a number of them. I actually had one cornered out in the open where he had no hole to squish into, when he went after my strobe light. I had it detached from my camera in an effort to line up some cool lighting, but he grabbed it and gave it quite a tug. I wrestled it away from him, but in the struggle, I lost position and he got away. I got a little ink for my trouble, and missed the shot. It at least makes for an interesting story.
Anyways, enjoy this week’s shots.
Dive 10-23
Macro shots show much improvement with the new strobe
I had some distracting life-type things come up recently that have kept me from posting my most recent shots. Sorry to anyone who was waiting on them.
This set of shots is interesting, as it is the first set of shots I took with my new strobe! Yes, I finally got a strobe for my underwater rig, and I can already see the difference. I was really able to get some more dramatic light, and there is a significant difference in color. However, the most impressive thing is that I was able to drop my F-stop value way down for my macro shots. This means that I can get a much larger depth of field and much more sharpness than before.
I was very impressed with the results that I got on my very first attempt, and am looking to get back out and try again.
Be sure to check out the sea cucumber shot. It was coming out of some sort of strange sac. I’m not sure if it was hatching, shedding, or reproducing. If anyone knows what that is, please let me know. Enjoy!
Weekend 10-16-2010
I was pretty happy with my anemone shots this weekend.
I will probably post an update to this post later this weekend, but I wanted to get these up since I am pretty happy with my anemone shots. Today was an interesting day, I saw several small bio-luminescent animals today. They were very small (a few millimeters), and I tried to point them out to others. However, as soon as I could get close enough to point them out, they would “turn out the lights”. I am not sure if anyone believes me, but I know I saw them. I am pretty sure I am not crazy, but how can anyone be absolutely sure on that point? Anyways, enjoy.
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.
I Guess Guillaume Has Gone Viral…
Well, I saw the Guillaume Nery base jumping at Dean’s Blue Hole Video on our club forums about a week ago, and thought it was a very beautiful and well executed work, but I didn’t really think much about it after that.
Would you believe it, today, I am on the phone with one of my employees from Wisconsin, USA, and he says to me “I saw this really cool video over the weekend of this guy base jumping underwater.” I immediately knew what he was talking about,a and when I swung over to youtube, the video had over 620,000 views. Pretty impressive. Plus, my employee was pretty astonished when I told him that he was our club president. Small world, huh?
If you haven’t seen the video, swing over to his blog and check out the video. It is seriously a nicely executed dive piece.
I have been getting quite a bit of traffic from people searching for Mr. Nery since this video came out, so for those who are interested in learning more about him and the sport, here is some info: Guillaume is a world champion free diver, and recently set the French depth record for apnea (free) diving at 115m (377 feet) in the constant weight class. For more info on Guillaume, here is his home page. I also wrote a short piece on him not too long ago here where I go into some of his other accomplishments, and there is a pretty good video there. You can find a ton of videos about Guiallaume Nery on his videos page: http://guillaumenery.over-blog.com/categorie-10432728.html.
He also has a ton of videos about him on youtube. I really enjoy this one.
It’s really great to see him getting all the press. If you find that interesting, and you don’t know anything about the sport, you can learn a little about it at Wikipedia. If you are in Nice, France, and want to try it out, you can click on the CIPA (our club) link to find a nice place to learn. It is a great sport, and very fun. Just remember, don’t EVER, EVER, EVER try it alone, or don’t try to attempt it without proper technique and security training. It can be very safe if done correctly, but if done incorrectly, it can easily be fatal.
Below is a well done clip discussing in-depth some of the dangers of the sport:
NSUC: Samba and Blackouts from USFA Inc. on Vimeo.
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
Odds and Ends From Last Summer’s Adventures in Nice, France
I was playing around the other night, and I ended up throwing together a video compilation of odds and ends from various adventures in and out and near the Mediterranean last summer. It’s about 5 mins long, and I thought it was kind of fun. There is nothing spectacular, but you can see some free diving clips, and some of the local flora and fauna in and out of the water. Plus, toward the end, you can see some birds dive-bombing for fish in the sea. That was a pretty amazing spectacle. Enjoy!
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/.
Ocean Quest and Frédéric Buyle
Free diver extraordinaire Frédéric Buyle. Photo by Zena Holloway.
Last week a friend sent me a video about an extraordinary free diver named Frédéric Buyle. The original video that he sent is located here.
It’s all in french, but worth watching even if you don’t speak french. This guy can hold his breath for over 4 minutes underwater, and he does a lot of photography and research work. In the film, you can see him aiding researchers in tagging sharks.
Anyways, I’ve been learning more about this gentleman, and in the course of my research I came across his work on the upcoming documentary “Ocean Quest”. The series is supposedly coming out late this year sometime, and if anyone finds a release date, please let me know, because I want to see it pretty bad!
Trailer:
The documentary site is here: http://www.ocean-quest.com
In the series, Buyle teams up with Christian Petron (who was involved in Luc Besson’s The Big Blue) in order to explore the vast underwater world without scuba gear. You see, bubbles disturb the marine life and scares many varieties of fish. This is an ambitious project, and I for one, am anxious to see the result.
