Some pics from Papua New Guinea

I have returned from 2 weeks staying on Motupore Island in Papua New Guinea. Motupore Island is based just out of Port Moresby in Bootless Bay (next to Loloata Island) and the purpose of this trip was to finish off the photography for a new book that will be released later this year. The book is an identification guide to ‘The Marine Life of Bootless Bay in PNG’ and will feature approximately 1000 different species (fish, corals, sponges, plants, molluscs etc…) from the area.

Over the 2 weeks I took just over 2000 pics; the focus of the trip was for species ID images however I still managed to capture a couple of ‘pretty shots’. I have put together a small gallery here:

http://www.daveharasti.com/Loloata07/index.html

Here are a couple of personal favourites:

Weedy Scorpionfish (Rhinopias frondosa)

The Pinnacles – I had one of my BEST ever dives at this site – we had 40m metre vis and incredible fish life!

Playing Peek-a-Boo with a pygmy!

Soft Coral Crab – about 1 cm wide

Pair of Rhinopias:

Lionfish on the prowl:

Beautiful images. If this is an example I'm sure the book will be stunning.

Beautiful shots. Definitely much better than your average ID shots. I especially like the free swimming seahorse.

Nice work Dave. Hope the new book is a success for you.

Todd

Beautiful works Dave.

I love the free swimming seahorse too. Amazing details of snapping shrimp with eggs.

Cheers,

beautiful artistic shots

Really nice pics Dave. I see many different focal lenghts on the Exif in your photos 60, 70, 90, do you mind to tell us what lens and combos do you use?

Me too!! Loved the post and the pics!

Good Luck, Carol

Dave....

Maybe a little help with marketing the ID pixs....a hot product here in HI, mainly for the visitors, is a wrist ID chart...pixs are printed on front and back of small cards (maybe 2"x2") that are attached to a coiled wrist "key chain."

Selling like hotcakes....funny too since the company that makes them is in Oregon.

other than that your pix is are brilliant

Really nice pics Dave. I see many different focal lenghts on the Exif in your photos 60, 70, 90, do you mind to tell us what lens and combos do you use?

I used 4 lens on this trip. My standard lens was the Sigma 17-70mm which I used on most coral reef dives. I used the Nikon 60 mm for targetting fish images, the Tamron 90mm for the small critters and finally I had a couple of plays with the Tokina 10-17mm for wide angle. However, the 10-17mm isn't that great for ID shots! All pics were taken with D80 in Ikelite housing using dual DS125 strobes.

Dave....

 

Maybe a little help with marketing the ID pixs....a hot product here in HI, mainly for the visitors, is a wrist ID chart...pixs are printed on front and back of small cards (maybe 2"x2") that are attached to a coiled wrist "key chain."

 

Selling like hotcakes....funny too since the company that makes them is in Oregon.

 

other than that your pix is are brilliant

I should have mentioned in my first post, this book is being developed for distribution to the local schools and villages throughout PNG free of charge. We are developing the book to help educate the locals in the Bootless Bay region about their local marine life and what they can do to help look after it. We have secured a couple of small grants to help pay for the printing, if I'm lucky I might be able to keep a couple of copies for myself! The book will be B5 in size, about 130 pages and around 1000 species.

A sneak peak of some DRAFT pages can be seen here, I'm slowing coming to gripes with Adobe Indesign!

Book Cover

Sample ID page

If anyone has any suggestions for decent book printers that are reasonably priced in the Australasia region could they please drop me a line.

cheers,

Dave