Ultimate Indonesia 2011 official trip thread

You guys had too much fun without me!

You guys had too much fun without me!

Beangabang was AWESOME Tony....where were you????

I only did the second half of the trip, which provided plenty of opportunities for wide angle and macro to keep everyone smiling.

The Damai 2 provided a truly unique experience of awesome diving, luxury accommodations, and tasty food with an exceptionally accommodating crew and cruise director to make it all happen.

Here are few pics from the Komodo portion of the trip (with still a ridiculous amount of images left to edit)...

Slideshow. Watch full screen for best results.

[vimeohd]32494028[/vimeohd]

What awesome finds. Unbelievable someone can find some of those critters.

Looks like a great trip and images by all.

Todd

i like the Bevan inspired Hair Metal soundtrack

The (topside) lighting that you had in some of those areas is spectacular. Enjoyed the near camera sacrifice by Phil, and the cute sea flea/nudibranch procession by Julie , among all the other excellent critter findings and photography.

Those of you shooting lots of supermacro on this trip - can you detail your setups these days (and whether you're happy with it, or still trying various options)?

Really excellent work putting together the slideshow, Eric. Most people may not realize just how much time, effort, and lack of sleep goes into editing video, collecting and compiling images at the end of the trip, and splicing it all together for the broader community to enjoy.

Amazing critterfest!

Looks like a great fun trip. Nice to see lots of friends enjoying themselves. A critter-fest indeed! Going to find time to watch the vid/show properly. :-)

Alex

Awesome shots everyone and the video is just brilliant. Phil, I love that shot of the flea. Glad you survived your near death experience with the dragon

We call Phil the DragonSlayer now. The dragons were relatively calm upto that point, but they got excited by Phil for some reason. We think it was cause he had a strap on his camera that was dangling around. Julian and I got a few awesome dragon shots though with that 'polecam' contraption made by Garry. He was only happy if he was using his drills, so we gave him ample opportunity. Our Nikon D7000 interval shooting worked very well there.

Matt, Julie and I were using D7000s with 105mm and macromate and/or teleconverters. Most people were using similar setups. Nikon/Canon 100/105mm with some kind of wet diopter. We had mostly Canon 7Ds and Nikon D7000s on this trip.

A few more..

Comfortable place to settle down..

After the guides showed us one, Julie found this one. Dont ask me how, these things look like a speck of algae.

Another one of the mating Ocellated Dragonets with eggs visible.

Eric noticed this fly

Cor, I love that you managed to isolate the algae shrimp so well! In my shots, there is always clutter behind the shrimp.

that one flea from Phil.. awesome colouration! where was that?!? never saw it before

Mike.. Torpedo Alley. There were several different ones there. Julie later in the trip found fleas all over komodo. Even on sites like Crystal Rock. The nudi with the 4 fleas was taken at Castle Rock I think.

Eric, that algae shrimp was near white-ish sand, so the background neatly blurred away into this pleasing off-white. It's my best algae shrimp series of the trip, most others sort of disappear into a background mess like you mentioned.

Mike.. Torpedo Alley. There were several different ones there. Julie later in the trip found fleas all over komodo. Even on sites like Crystal Rock. The nudi with the 4 fleas was taken at Castle Rock I think.

Castle Rock? haha, i always have wide angle there The 4 on a nudi was cool too!

Yes, we have found fleas up in the north, but usually the ones that look like the ladybugs from down south.

Fantastic shots...! thanks for sharing

Castle Rock? haha, i always have wide angle there The 4 on a nudi was cool too!

 

Yes, we have found fleas up in the north, but usually the ones that look like the ladybugs from down south.

At Disaster Bay (Garry's name) you can find three different types up in the shallows (6m depth) the yellow/blue striped the lady bugs and the black yellow spotted. But, they aren't highly concentrated like they are at Yellow wall. The ones at Castle rock were the ladybugs, but also highly concentrated on some things, like sponges with nudi's.