Johnny the Wonder Guide

The thing with diving your backyard most of the time and diving independently is that I sometimes forget the value of a good spotter and guide. It was such a person, the enigmatic Shaf formerly of Colombo Divers and now loose somewhere in the Maldives, who showed me the jeweled wonders of nudibranchs. Since getting a wideangle lens however, I have become a bit of a laggard at spotting the small stuff, obsessing more about vistas than the macro world.

The small stuff vs. the big stuff

The value of a good guide was really however brought home to me at White House Rock in the Andamans. Johnny was our guide for the experienced and photographer divers and he was the consummate professional and also has a gorge named after him. Calm and cool with us being independent divers and the eye of a hawk. Nothing was too small for his attention though I tried to give him as wide a berth as possible since I had my wide angle on so I didn’t really want to know what I was missing in the small stakes.

Johnnie (left) and Ivan (right in blue shirt) in conference

The tunnel vision brought on by the wide angle lens was really brought home in one incident. I was standing on my head trying to get the perfect angle on a sea fan, a beautiful dual fan with a shoal of glass fish.

See anything? Anything a few centimeters long and like a pipefish?

After getting what I thought was a decent photograph, I moved on to find another subject. About 5 minutes later I had a polite tap on my shoulder and turning found Johnny beckoning eagerly. I was a bit surprised to see him taking me back to the fan I had just photographed.

See anything now? Zoomed in and crop of the original. Look at the bottom left. 

Johnny pointed at the base of the second section of the fan and getting my nose in, I was delighted to see two beautiful pipefish, blue and orange. Unfortunately I could only get a photo for the sake of a photo as I had to unscrew the wide angle lens, hold on to that, move the strobe, and get into position to take the photograph. Not an easy task if you’re not an octopus.

 

The pipefish, what beauties

Photo of the Week (08/01/2012): Hunting Blue Fin Trevalley

Since I alluded to the feeding action on my last Photo of the Week post about the stoned octopus, I figured I would post an image of the action. The Wall, a dive site which was ridiculously convenient to get to from Vinnie’s dive center in the Andamans was full of life and amazing action. The top was home to shoals of bait fish and shoals of blue fin trevally would come charging in and in a flash hit the bait balls.



The focus lag on the DX-2G makes action photography a bit of a challenge but I managed to get some shots off. More to follow at a later date!

Photo of the Week (07/27/2012): A Blissful Octopus

A long, long overdue photo of the week. Octopi in Sri Lanka are generally quite skittish so I did a double take when I saw this octopus sitting serenely on a rock a few feet away from me at the Wall while diving in the Andamans. Getting closer to the fellow, I realized why it was so oblivious to me as I could see a cleaner wrasse diligently working it over.



The octopus was so obviously enjoying himself that he didn't even budge the closer and closer I got. In the end I got bored first as with the feeding action on the other side of the rock, there was only so much time I was willing to devote to a tripped out octopus.