Anilao Dives!

Hello everyone, after seing many amazing galleries posted on wetpixel I decided to finally post my favorites from my trip to the Philippines in April. All photo's are taken in Anilao, and I stayed with Club Ocellaris - which blew my mind as a dive and photography operation. I have only been diving a short time and learned a lot from the people there.

This was my first time shooting RAW, and also my first time editing with Lightroom (and I will never go back to anything else). I would appreciate any comments concerning the editing: did I get the color conversion right, is it over-sharpened, etc. Thanks in advance, and if your just looking, I hope you enjoy!

EDIT: All shots are taken with a Canon G10, 2x Inon UCL165 lenses (not all shots), and Sea and Sea YS110a and YS27DX Strobes. All set manually.

Steve

More Macro...

This guy "took off" while I was getting my focus set, he was tiny. I was using dual INON UCL165 Lenses.

Hermit on a Night Dive

Strong Surge and slow shutter speed...compostion isn't great but I like the movement

Last post!

My apologies for the lengthy posts, having to upload photos as I have no other photo-sharing/photo-hosting website currently set up!

I will post pics from Tubbataha and a series of shots of a Peacock Mantis with Eggs later!

Thanks for viewing, hope you enjoyed.

They look great Stephen! Congrats. I see some minor opportunities to improve a couple if you play with the strobe position. But all of us can always make those kind of improvements. Very impressive stuff.

If it was mine I'd play with the spot removal tool in the develop module to remove a couple of the nasty bits in your flying nudi shot. Your call of course.

You should check out Flickr for a place to put up your images. It's free and there are a great group of underwater photo types to share with.

Again congrats on what looks like a great trip.

Cheers,

Steve

great job Steve, wonderful photos, esp. the 1st 3. Glad to see you enjoyed club-O

Scott

Stephen no apologies for the long post needed....do you have more? They're all wonderful shots. I'd have to remark that the composition is outstanding. Cheers.

Nice images Steve, i enjoyed them a lot. The hairy is great, and i love the shot after that, very nice, and creative. What is that?

Thanks for sharing!

Steve; thank you for the advice. I realized after the trip I needed to be more concerned with my strobe position. I find the working distance with dual diopters is so narrow that i set my strobe position(s) and rarely change them by a great deal...where I should be changing the positioning more often. That said, the lighting on the first shot was intentionally (though I am sure you could guess that); an attempt at adding some drama. Here is another one with both strobes going!

ce4jesus; thank you, that means a lot. Above water my composition is terrible, so its something I work hard on underwater.

Scott - Club O. was outstanding. Dove with Alexis, a professional dive guide if I ever knew one.

The shot after the hairy is a Tube Worm. There were lots in Anilao but this was the most dramatically colored by far.

Thanks all for the comments, I will post more often as the criticism and comments is always greatly welcomed. Steve, I will definately look into the Spot Healing Brush (I have CS3 when I need more power than LR) for that flying Nudi. The trip was excellent. By far the best dive trip I have ever been on; one week at Club O (5 days diving) and 1 week on a liveaboard in Tubbataha (5 days on the boat, 4 diving). While I was okay diving without my permanent buddy, I really could have used her (my girlfriend/dive buddy) to model during the week at Tubbataha.

Steve

Great work Steve!

Really like the macro with dual diopters. Did You cropped those pictures alot?

Karel

Some fantastic shots there, I think that number 2 is pretty cool and the flying Nudi would be great with a bit of PS work. Have just got lightroom myself and I agree, it is great for quick editing.

Thanks all for the comments.

Karel - only 4 of the above shots are cropped, and then only slight crops (10-15%). I did crop other photo's a little more heavily, what with the G10 having 14.7 MP. But the one's posted here are mostly left as is - I will double check this after work. The posted quality may not be great as I have them all around 400 pixels in the long direction!

Tj - thanks, I think I need to do some work on that one And I'll re-post the finished result after work today.

Your flying nudi is an undescribed Hermaea. Your tube worm is actually a tube dwelling anemone. I think your Hairy frogfish photo is a stunner!

Cheers,

Marli

Wonderful collection. I really like the lighting in the first sot with half the face lit up and half in shadow.

Lovely!

Fantastic, thank you very much for sharing.

Joaquin Gutierrez

Thanks again everyone who replied.

Marli - thank you for correcting me! And for the comments on the frogfish photo. It is much appreciated.

Canuck - where in Alberta are you from?

I have corrected the flying nudi shot and hope it looks better now (attached below).

The comments have been wonderful and I will endeavor to post a few shots from Tubbataha soon!

That looks great Stephen. Made a big difference to my eye. Want to have some more fun? Go to the vignette section and try about -30 on the post crop vignette. I bet it would really pop. A single image centered like this is perfect for the tool.

Have fun,

Steve