The camera was rocking, the visibility was not that good, and I couldn't get the white balance correct to save my life, but I did get some good shots once I remembered all the settings and such (thanks for the notes, Melissa).
The first part of the dive was on the Tusa T5, a very crowded day boat. We were on that boat because the Spirit of Freedom had some maintenance that had to be done so they farmed us out. We did three dives on that boat, not much to speak of, a whole lot of folks were on the boat so it was tough to get away. Luckily, we linked up with the Spirit that evening and headed up the reef. I didn't take too many pictures on that part of the trip.
Day two, we were up on the top of the reef, and the diving got good. Initially there were only 12 divers on the Spirit, so we pretty much had the reefs to ourselves. The only hold up was there was a serious storm brewing, and there were a lot of winds associated with that storm. The winds made waves and the waves stirred up the sand so visibility was kind of bad, but the reef made up for it.
The first three days we were diving up on the top of the reef, working towards Lizard Island. One dive was a cod feeding dive, interesting, but I was more interested in the scorpionfish and dragon fish that I tried to take some pictures of. I have to go back and check the pictures out again and see if I can adjust them with the computer. Most of the dives were on traditional reefs, there was one dive on a bommie, Lighthouse bommie to be exact, very cool dive, but lots of current.
The first half of the trip my dive buddy was Tila, an awesome spotter and a great dive buddy. She could pick out the smallest stuff and waited patiently for me to take pictures of it. She was the one that found most of the pipefish and nutibranes early on in the dive. Tragically, her husband showed up the second half of the trip and she went diving with him. I dove with Dave, a lawyer from Great Britain, good dive buddy, but not as sharp eyes. The last few days of the trip I dove with Tila and her husband Steve.
Some of the other folks on the dive: Jenna the doctor in training from Kansas (last 4 days of the trip), she was just getting done with a month of exchange residency in Melborne and was travelling around Australia and New Zealand. Dick and Lydia, a couple from Alaska were with us for the first three days, Mike the author/swim coach/artist/illustrator was Dick's dive partner for the first three days, he gave me a cool sketch of some reefs he saw in Utilla, Honduras. We had a good talk about Honduras and Caribbean diving. CPT Zack was on board for the last 4 days as well, he was doing the same thing I was doing, getting as far away from Iraq as possible, while doing some good diving. There was also a pile of folks from Canada and a few other folks from the US, all in all, a good bunch of folks to go diving with.
My favorite pic:
The shrimp were just hanging around to clean any fish that came in there, pretty cool. The way they are looking reminded me of the seagulls in Finding Nemo, except they are saying ".....clean, clean, clean. . . . clean?" instead of mine. Tila, my dive buddy found the shrimp, she was excellent as a spotter, most of the early shots were stuff she saw and pointed out to me, after her husband showed up, my picture production fell off.
NOTE: All of the pictures that were posted on Picasso were adjusted with the computer for light, brightness and they were all cropped down to show the small stuff that we saw. If you have any questions on what the pictures are of, let me know. Even better, if you have any idea on what the pics are, let me know, I was just kind of guessing when I labeled them.
No comments:
Post a Comment