Story Behind The Shot – The Manta Train

Story Behind the Shot – The Manta Train

 Manta Train

Due to its popularity on social media the last few days, I have decided to tell the story behind the “Manta Train” photo.  This photo was taken in Yap, Micronesia on a dive site called “Valley of the Rays”, in Goofnuw Channel, a passage that connects the lagoon to the open ocean on the North East side of the island group.  From the months of May/June through to Oct/Nov, mantas are often found in this channel hovering above one of several cleaning stations while being swept clean of parasites by a variety of wrasse and butterfly fish.  During certain times of the month, around full and new moon, there can be a lot of plankton in the water (possibly fish eggs from a mass mating event or coral spawning) and large groups of mantas congregate in the channel in order to scoop up this food source.

On this particular occasion, I had arrived on a boat with Yap Divers (Manta Ray Bay Hotel), early in the morning and the conditions were perfect; sun, flat calm sea, and the beginning of the rising tide.  We jumped in the water at the edge of the pass and began to slowly drift into the channel with a mild current.  Not long after, we began to encounter small groups of mantas swimming back and forth along the water column, their mouths agape, scooping up nutrients from the water.  As we drifted further into the channel, the groups of mantas became ever more numerous and the encounters continued non-stop; both near the surface as well as up to 10-15 metres deep. An interesting behaviour of feeding mantas is that they often “draft” one another in long lines with the one behind slightly higher in the water column than the one in front, similar to how a cyclist stays close to the rider in front to improve aerodynamics.  This behaviour allows the manta situated behind to scoop up plankton that has been pushed over the top of the manta in front, allowing for a more efficient feeding action.  For this photo, I was hovering not too far from the surface when a large group of mantas in feeding formation turned and came racing toward me with mouths wide open.  As I saw them turn I immediately swam downward and was able to situate myself just above the “Manta Train” and fire off a series of shots.   This shot is my favourite and I believe it’s the one that captures the mantas behaviour best; a close inspection reveals 8 mantas in this photo.

Nikon D70, Aquatica Housing, Nikkor 12-24mm lens at 12mm, f8, 1/100, ISO 200, no strobes

Story Behind the Shot – Live Over Misool

Aerial Photo over Misool

Aerial Photo over Misool

This was one of my favourite recent photo shoots, shot on 31 Dec 2013 in the Misool area of Raja Ampat.  I was lucky enough to accompany a large private yacht on two expeditions in Indonesia this past year through Komodo and Raja Ampat.  One of the best things about this particular vessel, other than the 7 storeys of incredible luxury and a fantastic crew of 40, was the fact it has a helicopter on board!  Not only did the boat have a helicopter but, the owner is an extremely down to earth and friendly person who was always asking different members of the crew if anyone wanted to accompany him and the pilot on one of their flights.  On the last day of our time in the Misool area, he asked me if I would like to accompany and take some photos as well, I certainly didn’t hesitate to say yes!  This photo was one of the ones that I was able to take during a moment when we “stopped” the heli and I could open the door to take some shots.  All in all, an absolutely incredible hour was spent flying along the archipelago of islands that juts out from Misool near the Tomolol cave system and continues to the Daram island group.

 

 

Story Behind the Shot, A New Image Series

I am happy to announce a new series of blog posts that I call “Behind the Shot”, basically one photo (or a series of photos) where I will explain what particular technique or idea that I used to get the photo.  Some of the posts will be technical but most will just discuss an interesting photo and what my thoughts were when I was trying to capture it.  These photos will consist of both underwater and land based photographs and will encompass images from my library dating back to the 90s.  Hopefully I will post one or two of these a week and I will also cross post them on the Underwater Tribe Blog as well.

 

Shark Parade

Grey Reef Sharks

This image is one of my favourites from my time working in French Polynesia back in the early 2000s (I am dying to head back there!)  The lagoon entrance channel where this photo was taken is the epitome of “Pass Flying” dive sites, a narrow channel with a very strong tidal flow that enters the lagoon on a rising tide.  About 3/4s of the way through this channel a large school of grey reefs were resident at around 70ft of depth and would lazily circle the bottom of the channel while us divers “clung” to the sides mesmerized by the constant stream of sharks parading past.  To get this shot I waited until I was low on air and then shot out into the middle of the pass and allowed the current to push me toward the wary pack of sharks while taking a steady stream of photos.  Although many folks falsely believe sharks to be confident and predatory at all times, sharks are actually quite shy and don’t typically allow divers to get too close (unless there is feeding occurring).  Therefore, getting close to this school of sharks was no easy task!  As this shot was taken in the late afternoon, I needed to use a very slow shutter speed in order to separate the sharks from the background which ended up giving a “blurred” sense of motion to the image that I think works quite well in Black and White

Photo taken with Nikonos V and 15mm lens, Provia 100 ISO film, 1/30, f 5.6 depth of around 60ft (18 Metres), French Polynesia circa 2003

Bali Photo Workshop 25-30 October 2013

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

 

Underwater Tribe/NAD Lembeh Photo Workshop 2013 Day Two

SimonBuxtonID-130416-00025-2Day 3

 

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…