Tag: nudibranch

  • Add Electric Effects To Your Underwater Photos: A Topaz Glow Review

    Add Electric Effects To Your Underwater Photos: A Topaz Glow Review

    Topaz Glow doesn’t just leave your photos with the lights-in-the-tree twinkle. I mean, it can. But where Glow really shines (ahem) is in making an in-your-face, red-light-district, girls-girls-girls neon effect. It’s an acid trip. It’s the reflections of traffic lights at night in the rain. And it’s so, so rad.

  • Photo of the Week: Painted Greenling (and a Bonus Hermissenda Nudibranch)

    Photo of the Week: Painted Greenling (and a Bonus Hermissenda Nudibranch)

    Those who have been following this blog for any length of time will recall that finding tiny surprise creatures in a photo is one of my favorite things in the whole world.

  • This Spanish Shawl is the Goldilocks of Nudibranchs

    This Spanish Shawl is the Goldilocks of Nudibranchs

    In unpredictable surge and weird currents, it’s a challenge and a half to get a Spanish Shawl photo “just right.”

  • Diving The Kelp Cutter: The El Rey Wreck

    Diving The Kelp Cutter: The El Rey Wreck

    Every once in a while, we get off the beaten path a bit and dive some of the less-often-seen shipwrecks of San Diego’s Wreck Alley. El Rey is one of those wrecks: I believe I’ve (now) dove it twice in my nearly three years here. Both times, though, I’ve been blown away with how fun the…

  • Macro Mania

    Macro Mania

    I love shooting wide angle. When the water is clear, there is nothing more gratifying than that fisheye lens and dome port. Wrecks. Kelp forests. Big animals. Coral reefs. And people. Wide angle means context, and people love context. People identify with the scene. They like seeing themselves, or people like themselves, in the frame.…

  • Dreamy Nudibranch

    Dreamy Nudibranch

    The kelp forest can be a pretty dreamy place. The light coming through the kelp canopy has an ethereal beauty, and the gentle sway of the kelp stalks in light surge could rock you to sleep. I wanted to capture that surreal, unearthly quality in this week’s nudibranch photos.

  • Back to the Fuchsia

    Back to the Fuchsia

    Everything came together. I navigated through crappy visibility. I clambered around in surge that felt like the spin cycle. I stared at rocks until my vision focused on tiny fuchsia Spanish Shawls, my favorite nudibranch. I shed the responsibility of someone else’s good time, and all I had was my own.

  • Photo of the Week: The Hitchhiker

    Photo of the Week: The Hitchhiker

    If I’d had the ocular fortitude to spot the microscopic amphipod hitchhiking a ride on this nudibranch’s back, I would have spent all damn day shooting those two little guys. However, I never even saw it until I was home, my gear was rinsed and drying, and I was on the computer, heavily cropping this…

  • Updated Flickr Gallery: Anilao Muck Diving

    Updated Flickr Gallery: Anilao Muck Diving

    I’ve added new photos to my Anilao, Philippines muck diving gallery on Flickr, including underwater photos of pipefish, ribbon eels, and mantis shrimp. Enjoy :)

  • Back in Sun Diego: Solar-powered sea critters

    Back in Sun Diego: Solar-powered sea critters

    Yesterday, while enjoying the heat at the pool, I briefly considered the possibility that maybe I was actually solar-powered. I don’t need food anymore, I thought, All I need is warmth. This of course was incorrect, and I shuffled my flip-flops home almost immediately thereafter and ate some soup. But it reminded me of critters…