More Bali Underwater Macros / Close Ups

[Karl]

Here is a second lot of photos from my recent tripto Bali.

Comments welcomed

Karl

Cardinal Fish with eggs



Moray Eel



Honeycomb Moray Eel and Cleaner shrimp



Boxer crab - this guy is about 10mm in size

[Bobobird]

Beautiful shots Karl.

I like 3 best but I would clone out the partial shrimp (?) above the head.

#1 is nice too but the bright highlights are distracting the eye from the roe.

#2 is cool with him giving you the once over.

#4, I was going to say the head alone would make an excellent portrait and then saw the10mm. Would be pretty hard doing that I suppose.

Question - is the water really that clear or did you do something in pp to minimise the usual hazy look in lots of the underwater shots.

[Donald]

I remain in awe of underwater photographers.

That 'portrait' of teh Moray Eel is wonderful.

[pinakibaidya]

Awesome capture.

[HMW12]

Was wondering how close you were to the Moray eels? Aren't they supposed to be quite shy but aggressive or is that a misconception?

[ktuli]

Was wondering how close you were to the Moray eels? Aren't they supposed to be quite shy but aggressive or is that a misconception?

Morays will let you get relatively close, but too close and they will bite (though that is rare). Often they get a reputation for being fierce because they usually sit opening and closing their mouths - showing off their impressive teeth. I posted this one back in October that was also getting some dental work done... Actually, I'll add another shot there that shows their teeth off a little better. They have a row of teeth down the center of their upper jaw that looks quite formidable.

All in all though, the showing teeth thing is less of a threat and more just a necessary thing as that is how they force water over their gills to breathe. So you can generally get pretty close without too much concern, and their first defense will be to slink back down the hole they're usually peaking out of... As with most creatures, unless you really torment them, they aren't necessarily out to get you.

- Bill

[ktuli]

Oh - and I am especially jealous of the boxer crab in this set.

Karl, is it ok if I tag along on your next trip? You need someone to lug your gear while you're on land, don't you?

- Bill

[Karl]

Oh - and I am especially jealous of the boxer crab in this set.

Karl, is it ok if I tag along on your next trip? You need someone to lug your gear while you're on land, don't you?

- Bill

Bill - no problems, thinking of heading to Lembeh Straits for my next trip

Karl

[Karl]

Question - is the water really that clear or did you do something in pp to minimise the usual hazy look in lots of the underwater shots.

Thanks for that.

In regards to the water clarity some days it was about 15m and other days it was 5m so this had some complexity to the shots.

But essentialy I was trying out a new method and I was using snoots on my strobes to light the subject but not the foreground or background and this seemed to work okay.

I do very limited PP in PSE 9 - basically just levels, brightness / contrast, unsharp mask and some healing brush to remove some floaty bits and that is all.

The camera is a Canon G12 with twin strobes (with snoots as mentioned) and I have either a single +3 or two +3 macro wet lenses fitted to the front of the housing.

Settings were F8 @ 1/160th sec ISO 80.

Hope this helps.

Karl

[Dave Humphries]

Great shots Karl,

Personally, if mine, I would spend a minute or two on each removing or toning down the 2 or 3 most serious distractions for even better 'wow factor' to these.

Cheers,