Surf Photography

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I started a new form of photography for me a few weeks ago while visiting some pretty famous surf spots off the south and west coasts of Sumatra. Taking advantage of being the only people in the area, along with a quick boat and 400mm worth of lens, I was able to enjoy shooting waves, surfers, and boogie boarders for the first time. The trick was to get the boat in the right place at the right time, not an easy task! But, the boat drivers did a great job resulting in a lot of good photo opportunities. The best way forward was simply putting the camera on Shutter priority and rapid burst to capture the quick movement of the surfers. I experimented a lot and took one heck of a lot of photos, but I think I certainly captured a few keepers. The experience also got me to thinking that I wanted to finally try surfing, so I have signed up for a one day class this coming weekend, hopefully you are never too old to try something new.

Here are a few photos to look at, thanks to Brett and Walt the two models!

Mountain Biking in Bali

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One of the activities I have been getting up to a lot in Bali these days is mountain biking. I bought a good full suspension bike around the beginning of March and have been trying to get out and do some riding quite often when I am in town. For those not too familiar with Bali, it’s actually a very mountainous sort of place with lots of hills and off road terrain. The sort of riding that we are doing is what could be described as Cross Country, no major single track downhill stuff (mostly we are too old for that) but rather some very interesting trails through the woods, rice fields, and some gnarly roads found throughout Bali. We have been riding in the areas of Bedugul, Kintamani, Ubud, Tabanan, and the small island of Serangan near Sanur. There are loads of tracks still to be ridden but we are slowly finding more and more fun rides to go on. We have a group of anywhere up to 10 people joining us on these rides which can take anywhere from about 2.5 hours to 5 or 6 hours. If you are interested in riding with us then let us know and hopefully can sort something out.

Here is a short video that shows one of the rides in Bedugul.

Bali Photo Workshop 25-30 October 2013

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Diver and Schooling Horse Eye JacksFollowing the success of our underwater photo workshop in Lembeh this past April, we have decided to host another event in Bali during the best season of the year, October 25-30.  This event will be another 5 day event with a maximum of 12 participants, everyone will get a chance to dive with each of the two photo instructors during this course.  We will be discussing f-stops, shutter speeds, strobe angles, playing with light, composition, and of course workflow using Lightroom.  This is going to be a really fun event with incredible photo opportunities so don’t miss out!

This class is filling up fast so please send us an email at info@underwatertribe.com for more information or check the Underwater Tribe website for more details: http://underwatertribe.com/Bali_workshop_2013.html

 

Octopus Shenanigans

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Octopus Shenanigans

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One of my favourite inhabitants of the underwater world is the octopus.  Non divers may think of octopus as just “octopus?!?!” an item they see photos of from time to time or else as some sort of culinary item (not recommended!) However, to the well informed people (by this I mean those of us who scuba dive 😉 ) octopus are one of the most sought after encounters to be had.  These long legged mollusks are one of the most intelligent “non mammals” on the planet and an encounter with one is always a treat to any diver.  Having the opportunity to sit and watch one of these wily critters is always fun, especially if the octopus in question is up to something (hunting, house building, general tomfoolery such as attacking cameras)

In Bali, one of the best places to encounter octopus is the dive site Puri Jati (also known as PJs) which is located on the north side of the island, not to too far from Lovina.  The species which can be found here are some of the most sought after for underwater photographers:  mimic, long arm, and coconut octopus, I won’t bother with the scientific names!  Last week, I was in north Bali teaching an underwater photography class with a student who was learning both wide angle and macro photography techniques.  However, as part of his class he wanted to have a day in between so he could practice techniques without me, no problem I thought, I will go diving!  So I did, and am I ever happy I did that.  I took a wander down to Puri Jati and jumped in for two dives, a total of close to 200 minutes with a max depth of about 10 metres (30 feet) in nice warm water.  It turned out to be a very octopussy sort of day, with 7 different individuals of 3 different species with half of them being “players”.  The best two encounters were with a small mimic octopus and a large coconut octopus who were dueling for my attention.  The coconut had a great home that he was transporting around (coconut shell and clam shell) while the mimic was out for a jaunt and poking his tentacles into every crevice looking for a meal.  I spent over an hour just watching and photographing these two individuals and came back with some fantastic photos.  I have posted one here, but the others are a part of another project so can’t be posted quite yet.

 

 

May 1 Update

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I have been back in Indonesia now for 2 months since a prolonged 4 months in Canada (over winter even!) and wow, what a two months it has been!

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Luca and Niko looking for Pygmy Seahorses

In March, I taught two private photo classes in Bali as well as a fun road trip around the island with the Underwater Tribe.  In April the fun really began!  After another trip around Bali with Simon and Sofie Pridmore for a magazine article, I made my way to the old haunts at NAD Lembeh Resort.  Along with Matt Oldfield, we conducted a photo workshop for 12 students and had an amazing but busy week.  I believe that everyone learned a lot and thoroughly enjoyed their time with us, we will be conducting another workshop in Tulamben, Bali in late October.  Of course we spent a few days of diving for ourselves before and after the class in order to get some photos to fill out our portfolios.  I decided to dive only with the 10.5mm + 2X TC combination as it’s a great set up for octopus, my main target for the week, and it did prove challenging.  I had to pass up a lot of great subjects that others with more “macro” setups got to shoot but that’s ok, I got the octopus photos I wanted in the end (no sneak peaks yet)!  I am very much looking forward to heading up to NAD Lembeh again soon for more photo opps in Lembeh.  It really is a great resort and is proving to be the resort of choice for serious photographers in Lembeh Strait.  I was blown away by all of the changes in the last 3 years.

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Shrimp on a Snake Eel

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Photo Workshop Participants

Matt and I also spent a day at the Tasik Oki animal rehabilitation centre just outside of Bitung.  The folks at Tasik Oki work with local officials and the police to rescue illegally held animals that are kept as pets throughout the North Sulawesi area, animals such as cassowary birds, orangutans, macaques, and gibbons just to name a few.  Of course don’t forget the Sun Bears who are kept for their gall bladder production, what a horrible thing that is!  The centre has two sun bears on location, adorable little bears who are now enjoying a much better life than previously but unfortunately won’t be able to go back to the wild.  They have successfully seized many of these unique and endangered animals from very poor conditions and are able to care for them much better than those keeping them as pets.  I know its tough to see photos of these animals behind bars but its better than what they had before, the staff at Tasik Oki truly do keep good care of their animals. If you have the chance to visit Tasik Oki then please do, also, if you have some spare income to offer as a donation then it’s always appreciated as it goes to the benefit of these animals.

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Cassowary

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Sun Bear! I had no idea they were so small

Not 36 hours after arriving back in Bali, I was off on another private photo class in Tulamben before having a few days in Sanur to finish a couple of deadlines.  Now it’s the first of May and I started the day out with a 2.5 hour bike ride with my friend Graham, a great way to start the day!  I will be heading out to north Bali in a couple of days for more photo instruction and then then who knows?!   2013 has started out as a busy year and also a good and bad one (for reasons I won’t get into here) but the rest of the year certainly looks like it will be busy and fruitful with a lot of exciting adventures coming up!  Looking forward to it.

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Lembeh Sunset

Final Day of the Underwater Tribe/NAD Lembeh Photo Workshop

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Day 5

We are now on the last day of the workshop and there is a bit of sadness in the air as several people are leaving tomorrow but the fact we still have a day of diving left means lots more photos! Highlights of todays dives are flambouyant cuttlefish, giant frogfish, a coconut octopus with a collection of shells, and pygmies galore. After lunch Matt presented a talk about developing photos in Lightroom, which followed on with his talk about the importing process from day 2. After the third dive of the day everyone gathered their best shots from the week and handed them in for the final slideshow. After a great dinner with a BBQ chicken and shrimp satay feast, we had another milestone dive cake, 500 dives for Dmitry!

After dinner all 12 students gathered upstairs along with the rest of the people at the resort to watch a great slideshow of images from everyone who participated. We had over 150 images submitted and the slideshow was very entertaining for everyone with some killer photos submitted. After a couple of concluding speeches from Matt, Mike, and Lael the beer came out along with some very interesting stories to top off the night.

We would like to thank all 12 participants of our photo workshop: Andreas, Peter, Koy, Kit, Roy, Jennifer, Dmitry, Eliana, Jovin, CC, Margaret, and Lael for joining us on this workshop. We are glad that everyone was able to learn a lot about underwater photography and we hope to see you all again soon!

Underwater Tribe/NAD Lembeh Photoworkshop Day 4

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Matt and Mike switched boats today in order to start diving with the other half of the group.  We all headed out to the north end of the bay and ended up having a pygmy seahorse extravaganza.  Matts group saw bargibanti, denise, and pontohi pygmies all on the same dive!  Mikes group had to make due with a very pregnant looking denise of the dark red variety.  During lunch we had a little celebration for two of the group, Lael who made her 100th dive and Peter who made it to 300, congrats to both of you!  After the cake it was time for Mike to discuss Composition techniques and present a slideshow of images discussing different ideas.  We had one heck of a rain shower just as we were jumping in for the third dive of the day which made things a little dark, but that’s ok, perfect opportunity to shoot macro black backgrounds!  Dinner was followed by a slideshow from Matt who presented some of his all time favourite images to the crowd, and it was one heck of a slideshow of beautiful images from all over the world.  Tomorrow will mark the last day of diving for the workshop but several lucky folks will continue on for a few more days of diving.  We are looking forward to a slideshow of images from everyone tomorrow night to showcase the variety of critters that everyone has captured on camera.

Underwater Tribe/NAD Lembeh Photo Workshop 2013 Day Two

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Up early today to one heck of a full day of diving!  The plan is to dive, dive, and dive some more:  three day dives and one night dive.  Matt and his group of intrepid souls head out to Makawidey Pier and Pantai Perigi for the morning with seahorses, flambouyant cuttlefish, coconut octopus, and a Randalls frogfish as the highlights of two 75 minute dives.  Mike and the “Mimic” gang head to Makawidey 2 with the usual show of seahorses, mantis shrimp, and not one but two giant frogfish as well as Tanjung Kubur with more seahorses and cuttlefish to be found.  The afternoon started with a great lunch of Beef Rendang followed by a lesson about Adobe Lightroom cataloguing and importing by Matt.  The afternoon dives had coconut octopus and the colour purple:  a purple seahorse as well as a purple Ambon scorpionfish, very cool.  After a brief snack of pisang goreng at the resort we all headed back out on a night dive where we saw several frogfish, octopus, flambouyant frogfish, and of course a cute little bobtail squid.  Once again we had a great dinner around the famous NAD Lembeh longtable with the meal consisting of a local favourite of Soto Ayam (chicken noodle soup) and fresh fish.  The meal arrangement at NAD is one of my favourite features of the resort, they set up all of their smaller tables into one long table so that everyone who is staying at the resort has the chance to sit and chat to everyone else.  It truly is a very sociable affair as the guests are constantly sitting beside a different person at each meal and meeting new friends from all over the world.  After the meal Mike launched into an interesting 40 minute discussion/slideshow about “Playing with Light” where he discussed unorthodox lighting and how to make both macro and wide angle photos stand out from the crowd by simply thinking more about the use of light.  Not long after this lecture the tired troops hit the sack after almost five hours of underwater time for the day!  Until tomorrow…

Underwater Tribe/NAD Lembeh Photo Workshop 2013

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Day 1

We were very happy to welcome 12 eager photo students last night to NAD Lembeh Resort!  After a brief introduction of the instructors, Mike Veitch and Matt Oldfield, along with NAD’s owners Simon and Zee Buxton, we had everyone introduce themselves and tell us a little about themselves.  In a sign of a truly international event we are hosting students from Singapore, Malaysia, England, Thailand, the USA, Mauritius, Russia, and Brazil! Wow, what a group.

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Up bright and early today for two morning dives.  We have split the folks into two groups of six and each instructor is following along with each boat in order to give personal tips to each student.  The way the Underwater Tribe organizes photo instruction in events like this is to accompany each diver for a full dive giving one on one photo tips throughout the dive.  Once the instructors have finished diving with each of the six members of the group we will switch boats and then accompany the other six so each diver will have the chance to dive with each instructor.

We dove 4 different sites in the morning and the list of critters was long!  Frogfish, ribbon eels, nudis, squid, octopus, spiny devil fish, flambouyant cuttlefish and the list goes on!  After a great lunch, Mike gave a talk about photography in Lembeh and the best methods of capturing the critters.  The afternoon saw the groups heading out on a third dive before a beautiful sunset at the resort.  Following a few sunset drinks Mike gave the “big” lecture on how to control f-stops, shutter speeds, and strobes, only 3 people fell asleep!  After a big dinner Matt Oldfield inspired the group with a slideshow of images from Sulawesi showcasing the beautiful macro and wide angle opportunities that can be found in the area.

 

Off to Lembeh!

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Photographer and CuttlefishIt’s been a busy few weeks in Bali between teaching a few photography courses to some great students and a quick 5 day whirlwind tour around the island with Aquamarine and Simon and Sofie Pridmore.  After 12 hours at home, I am now in the Makassar airport on my way to Lembeh Strait and the NAD Lembeh Resort for our first Underwater Tribe/NAD Lembeh photography workshop.  Its been a long time since I have spent any time in Lembeh and I am really looking forward to it.  Will do some diving and photography but really looking forward to spending some time with Simon, Zee, and Matt Oldfield as well as a great group of photography students who will be joining us next week.  Matt and I will be posting photos and updates on our blogs and Facebook if you would like to follow along.

Photographically I am going to concentrate on the wider side of Lembeh, so stay tuned!