Just got back from Komodo

Looks like half the people here were recenty in Indonesia :-)

Anyway, we were on the Komodo Dancer and had a wonderful time. Good boat, great cruise director, great food, great diving. The vis was a little on the milky side so we spent quite a bit of time with macro lenses on.

All shots here are with a 7D, Nauticam, and Z240's.

I experimented with completely manual strobes this time to get past the internal strobe recharge lag in TTL. I have more to learn...

I have a ton more, I'll post a few from time to time.

As I slowly approached this bobtailed squid, he would jump up and swim back a few inches, briefly exposig his tentacles. I timed it until I got a shot.

One very happy crab gleefully chowing on the bloodworms my light brought to him.

I like the little blue crab, haven't seen one quite like that before.

good stuff Mike, Komodo is still the best overall destination in Indo for sheer variety if you ask me. Who was your cruise director?

They're all wonderful photos but I especially like the little bobtail squid!

-Gina

ditto Jack

That blue crab shot is just delightful....a little beauty! :-)

I like the little blue crab, haven't seen one quite like that before.

Thanks Jack, I haven't either, and that crab hold the nearly singular distinction of being a critter I found myself instead of being located by our sharp eyed DMs or other photogs ;-)

good stuff Mike, Komodo is still the best overall destination in Indo for sheer variety if you ask me. Who was your cruise director?

I'd have to agree. The CD was Michael Ishak. Great guy, tireless, personable, professional. Knew the boat and the area. I give him extremely high marks, but he is moving on from the Dancer soon to other endevours.

On of the very special things he did for us was slapping together a really teriffic HD video of our trip and handing it to us on a digital file at the end of the trip, gratis. It was incredibly generous for him to do that, and it left an indelible impression on all of us.

Here is the video if you care to have a look. If you go to youtube to view it, you can select HD and it looks much better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBLVrJIs4Y4&list=UUkZSnpQ32QqU15eQ4LY0i3Q&index=1&feature=plcp

They're all wonderful photos but I especially like the little bobtail squid!

 

-Gina

Thank you Gina, I like that one too because of the exposed tenticles. Never seen bobtail tenticles in a pic before. I know they are out there, just haven't seen one. Did you notice the interloper at the right side of the frame?

ditto Jack

 

That blue crab shot is just delightful....a little beauty! :-)

Appreciate that damo!

Your macro shots are amazing! I especially like the squid and the blue crab pictures. Great composition on the crab. I was on that boat a couple of years ago. It is nice to hear that they have maintained their high standard.

Mike, you can add youtubehd and just the call number and it'll be in HD here in HTML5 or Flash.

I loved the moray with the cleaner shrimp.

Your macro shots are amazing! I especially like the squid and the blue crab pictures. Great composition on the crab. I was on that boat a couple of years ago. It is nice to hear that they have maintained their high standard.

Thanks! It really was a great trip on that boat, the crew was outstanding. The only thing I would do differently the next time is ask for Indonesian food for all meals. They served local options for breakfast (I ALWAYS chose the Mie Goring with eggs) and local buffet for lunch, then some sort of internation food for dinner. The dinners were good, but they were doing chicken and spaghetti and steak and trying to please a westerrn palate when the local food was off the charts. A free glass of wine with dinner and unlimited free beer was a nice touch!

Cabins were a little cramped for that type of boat, but adaquate. One other thing worth mentioning, they did a great job at timing the dives to keep us out of the worst of the current. We only had a couple dives where we were struggling. In fact, on a couple dives the DM was mentioning that he wished for more current, when it's too calm less happens.

Mike, you can add youtubehd and just the call number and it'll be in HD here in HTML5 or Flash.

Thanks Drew! I'm not familiar with that procedure, so I need to re-upload the file to a different location at Youtube? I want back to Youtube, manually selected HD, but the call number (url?) didn't seem to change. Maybe I don't know what a call number is.

I loved the moray with the cleaner shrimp.

Thanks! That came from an amazing cleaning station at the shore dive at Scuba Seraya on Bali. At about 75 feet, in the middle of the barren black sand, is a patch of coral about 5 feet square, with more stuff packed into it than you can imaging, including hundreds of cleaner shrimp and a resident eel. Fish of all vaireties come by for a cleaning and they aren't shy. I could easily have spent an entire dive staring at that spot but there is always a line of photographers waiting.

Here are a few more:

I was just there in August. Love the blu crab! Species? Also like the cleaner shrimp on the moray. Well done. Going back?