Well, as many of you know, I recently returned from a trip to Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro in the Philippines. Once again i had a fantastic time, stayed with Asia Divers/El Galleon and truly enjoyed myself. Actually the third time i have been there. The diving is varied and rich, the reefs are home to an incredible amount of crinoids and corals and the critter count is pretty darn good as well. On Senandegan Wall there seem to be more nudibranches per square metre than anywhere else i have seen. Sebang offers some interesting dives as well, from a bunch of purposely sunk wrecks to seagrass beds home to loads of snake eels and interesting little pipefish and sea horses.
Photographically I did not get a chance to shoot much, the reason for being there was to teach a photography workshop and we make it a point not to bring our cameras when teaching in order to give hands on help underwater. Coupled with a day of golf (no golf in Yap!) and a day off after the workshop, i only got the camera down on about 12 dives in two weeks..oops...
What i was trying to do on this trip was play with light a little more. Creating shadows was one of the things as well as isolating subjects. This is the first time i have really concentrated on trying to get black backgrounds as i have always liked bright backgrounds better. In order to get the "moody" look i was after we tried a few different things such as "snoots" (water bottle and duct tape) on the strobes to one strobe to one on full and one on 1/8th to backlighting and sidelighting and on and on....
Here are a few samples of both UW and topside.. the rest can be found here: PG Gallery
something about motorcycle and going downhill I think he mentioned 
