Cephalopod

Caribbean Reef Squid

Octopus eggs

Adult O. macropus (has been used as a cover photo for a children's book)

A deep-sea octopus

Sepia pharoanis (cuttlefish) during Zebra display

Courting Reef Squid

How many times have you passed right by one of these guys?

Squid hunt at night, so do some photographers

Nautilus

Good shots!

Can you guve more detailes: where they were taken and with what equipment.

btw: to me its a little disturbing the big fonts on the pictures

The first image was taken in Bonaire with a Nikonis V and a 15 mm lens. Two stobes, ultra light arms. There is more info on this:

http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/Ssepioidea.html

http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/Mather.html

http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/squidsoap.html

The second image was taken with a Pentax K1000 with extension tubes way back when and was part of my undergraduate honors thesis at UF (1993?). The octopus eggs are in a dark field set up. Ie they are in a petri dish with a black velvet background and tungsten or strobes? lights backlighting them. Mom octopus was collected in the FL Keys.

Image 3 is an adult O. macropus taken in The Dry Tortugas National Park. This animal was amazing and I shot the role on him. I’ve only ever seen one of these guys in the Caribbean. Same NV as shot 1.

Image four is a somewhat rare shot of a deep-sea octopus. See:

http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/barctic.html

I studied these guys for my PhD thesis in Canada. The octopuses are from the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. They were photographed in captivity using a NV and extension tubes. The water is about 4C – damn cold!

Image 5. Ack, your are finding out that I cheat! Not all my shots are form the wild. I was fully wet when I took this shot but I was swimming inside one of our large growout tanks at work (University of Texas Medical Branch). I have no idea what I used for this one, probably NV with 2 strobes and extubes.

7, 8, and 9 are from Bonaire and all are animals in the wild. Here I used JamesW’s cool pix. Thanks! That octopus is 7 meters down and I never would have seen him if he didn’t happen to move while I was swimming out to watch squid.

The last shot is a captive Nautilus that I photographed in Canada. I’m in the tank again with him. Nikons. As I work with cephalopods I have some opportunities to do this sort of thing.

These guys are cephalopods but they really are more like swimming snails. As this guy swam by and out of my shot, I reached out and turned his shell 180 degrees and he swam right back thought my shot and I got him. I laughed when I realized what I had just done. If you even THINK about touching a squid it is gone!

I have images from Hawaii, Nova Scotia, Caymans, Micronesia and a few other places. Heading to the Red Sea and Thailand in the next few months, hope to have an S2. JamesW lets me play with his equipment but I have a lot to learn about Digital Photography.

All of the in the water images (1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10) were taken snorkeling and not diving. I do dive but spend more time snorkeling.

Yes the logo's are damn annoying but they are there for a reason. I've even had people remove them in Photoshop and resell my images as there own. If people wouldn’t do that, then you wouldn’t have to look at the junked up images.

James,

these are beautiful pictures (even with the copyright B) )

Sabine

BTW: Your website is one of my favourite id links !!!

Thanks for the details and the links for your site.

I'll keep it to the next weekend to read it (this weekend I'm going to dive

)

Hi James,

Nice images, of nice subjects.

Got any pix of those giant octopus around Alaska?

Cheers,

Bob

PS check-out arty pix p2

I actually do not have any giant pacific octopus (GPO) images as I've not been to Seattle - Alaska - Japan area for diving. I hope to someday. Colleague and friend Dr. Roland Anderson works with these guys and has a number of images of them. Our lab just recieved a GPO and I hope to get some lab shots soon. Hope that S2 arrives soon!

Thanks for the kind words about my pixels.

James

This shot fits this thread.

S2, 60mm, 2 SB-105's, 1/60, F22, ISO 100, +0.5 EV, TTL

This octopus and his buddies are seen frquently in the daytime in Hawaii

Nice reef squid (Sepioteuthis sp) and Octopus images! The colors looks a little enhanced to my eye (maybe I'm to much of a scientist!) but the images and composition are great. Well done.

I have my very own digital camera now, an S2. I'm an official camera carrying member of wet pixel now. All my cameras have names and this one is "The Toy".

I’m learning the ropes topside before I take her into the blue. Day 1 didn’t go so well as I blew the images out with slave flashes but day two, with good natural light and reflectors, produced images I’m willing to let people see. The cephalopod connection to this is that one of the ways we tell what octopuses are eating is by their middens - piles of crab carapaces and mollusk shells found outside their lairs. And some of these shells were my test subjects. This has the added advantage of free labor - the octopuses are better than we are at finding some species and every now and then they find something we have never found ourselves, such as a carrier shell. I actually though it was a rock until I turned it over. The pictures of the hole in the conch illustrate another aspect of octopus feeding, they will drill holes though shells when they have to and inject their cocktail of enzymes.

http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/web2/index.htm

PHD in Canada and you don't mention British Columbia for the Giant Pacific Octopus.

That second shot is very cool.