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Old Piers and simple pleasures

February 23, 2010Written by colinmunro

Mussels, Mytilus edulis, and Obelia indivisa hydroids on an old pier leg

I took my first underwater pictures bimbling about between the uprights and cross-members of an old wooden pier. That was with second-hand Nikonos III, a set of extension tubes and a Sunpak 28 strobe. I’ve probably still got it somewhere. Underwater photography has moved on a long way since then but I still love exploring old wooden piers and the opportunities they present for macro-photography. The uprights are normally festooned with filter-feeding life: hydroids and sea squirts often forming dense carpets. Dahlia and Sagartia anemones add a splash of colour. To me the beauty of macro-photography is that the basic skills can be learned quite quickly and sharp, colour-saturated images can be created even in our often quite turbid coastal waters. There is also the fun of exploring and discovering small creatures in crevices and overhangs; the joys of being a kid again for an hour or so. Each pier or jetty presents its own particular hazard. This can range from watching that a dropping tide doesn’t leave you trying to clamber up the bottom rungs of a badly corroded and rickety old ladder when trying to exit the water, to avoiding being knocked unconcious by the weapons grade halitosis of betching bull sealions as they lie flopped across the jetty cross members. But the pleasures tend to remain the same; hunting for that perfect patch of jewel anemones or symmetrical cluster of featherduster tubeworms.

The above pic was taken on the legs of a fairly tide swept pier in Southern Ireland. Large, fat mussels gaped in the rich feeding currents and between them bright orange Obelia hydroids swayed like tiny sunflowers. The trick with all macro-photography (and indeed much temperate water photography) is to slow down and look closely at what is literally just in front of your nose. The other pleasure that often comes from macro-photography is that one often discovers new things in the image that you never saw at all when composing the photograph. To take the above example; I was completely oblivious to the tiny crustacean scuttling about between the Obelia polyps, only noticing it once I had developed the film (yes, this is a film image), scanned the slide and viewed it on my laptop. This still applies with our current top-end DSLRs. Although lcd screens are improving all the time, small details are only revealed when the image is downloaded and viewed on a much larger screen.

Underwater Photography Workshop
For those interested I will be running a one day workshop, an introduction to underwater photography, in Exeter, Devon next month (6th March). This is intended for those relatively new to underwater photography looking to acquire a good grounding in the theory and practical skills, or possibly decide which system they are going to go for. There are still a few places left as I write this. For more info go to: Introduction to underwater photography workshop

Diving stories, Macrophotography, Photographic courses & workshops, Underwater photography Colin Munro, diving, film, Macrophotography, microphotography, photographic technique, photographic training, photography courses, Underwater photography, workshops

The worst whale picture you’ll ever see

February 4, 2010Written by colinmunro

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Humpback whale swimming under a fishing vessel, Lyme Bay, Southwest England

I have just uploaded what is probably the worst whale picture you’ve ever seen, or are likely to. For a start it was taken with an old Nikonos III camera, without use of an additional hand held light meter. Those old Nik IIIs were purely mechanical, so no built in light meter; thus exposure was based on the ‘guesstimate then bracket like hell’ maxim. Secondly, it was taken with the only wide angle lens I owned back in those days, a cheap plastic supplementary lens of rather dubious sharpness. To be honest the lack of sharpness was not really an issue. I was shooting in turbid coastal waters, where horizontal visibility near the surface was between 8-10 metres (26-33 feet); pretty good for the area as it happens but lousy for shooting whales. On top of this strong winds had been blowing so the shallow coastal water was nicely loaded with suspended sediment lifted off the seabed. This made for a rather hazy 8-10 metres visibility. As if that weren’t enough, conditions were further complicated by this occurring around 7.30pm, so the sun was getting low and light levels below the surface were dropping like a stone. To cap it all I had no fast colour film with me (yes this was waaaay back in the pre-digital days). I had not gone diving to photograph whales. I knew the visibility was likely to be lousy so I had arrived armed with a set of extension tubes for macro-photography and several rolls of Fuji Velvia 50 slide film. This produces wonderful, detail and rich, saturated colours, But it is slow! Certainly useless for photographing something the size of a bus in turbid, low light conditions. Throwing everything out of my camera bag over the deck of our dive boat I fished out an old roll of 400 asa film. Now that was more like it; still going to struggle but at least there was a chance of a recognisable image now. Only problem was it was black and white negative film (so long ago I forget exactly what). Still, it was that or nothing. So I loaded it with shaking hands are rolled over the boats gunnel into the water. The slowest shutter speed available on Nik IIIs is a 30th sec, so I wound it right down and hoped for the best. Black and white negative film is more forgiving of poor exposure than slide, which was just as well really.

So I guess I was quite fortunate (and there was a lot of luck) to get any recognisable images at all. But apart from nostalgia, why hang on to them, and why publish them online? The pictures are nearly two decades old now and after all, I have lots of lousy quality pictures from years gone by. The main reason, apart from being able to waffle on about the difficulties of photographing large marine mammals in lousy conditions, is that, eighteen years on, as far as I am aware these remain the only underwater pictures taken of a humpback whale in British coastal waters. I can still remember my utter amazement as I peered over the boat’s rail into the water below, watching a dark shape slowly rise up. As it approached the surface not more than two metres from the boat I could clearly make out a long, white object. When it was around a metre below I suddenly realised I was staring at a massive white pectoral fin. ‘Bloody hell! It’s a humpback!’ I remember shouting (okay, it may have been slightly stronger than ‘bloody’). By the time it broke the surface I was already throwing dive gear together. I loaded my camera, threw my cylinder on and rolled over the gunnel faster than any time before or since, oblivious to what anyone else was doing. I settled on the bottom at around 10 metres. I peered around but he (or she) was nowhere in sight. What now? Fortunately I didn’t have to wait long. The humpback was intensely interested in the boats echo sounder transducer and kept returning to make passes under the hull. I floated up to mid-water and simply hung there, waiting for him to return then clicked away frantically changing aperture sizes as I did so.

A small population of humpbacks inhabits the Eastern Atlantic, migrating each year between their arctic feeding grounds and breeding grounds off Cape Verde. They are frequently spotted off the West coast of Ireland as they head North or south. This guy somehow made a wrong turn off Cornwall and headed East along the English Channel. After our memorable dive he was not seen again, as far as I know. Let’s hope he made back on track.

I continue to muddle away at underwater photography, so if anyone is tempted I shall be running a series of workshops from March 2010 onwards. More info at Colin Munro photography Main Index under Courses and Workshops

If anyone knows of other humpbacks photographed underwater around the UK I’d be most interested to learn about it.

Colin Munro 3rd February 2010.
Colinmunrophotography.com

Conservation, Diving stories, Environment, Photographic courses & workshops, Uncategorized, Underwater photography Colin Munro, diving, Diving stories, film, Humpback whales, Lyme Bay, marine mammals, migrations, Underwater photography

Boats and wind and winter skies

November 26, 2009Written by colinmunro

We’ve just had around ten days of stormy weather here in southwest UK; a series of deep lows have driven rain-laden westerlies out of the Atlantic and up the English Channel. I’ve spent this time trying to effect repairs on my deck between squalls, while winds howl through the rigging. Trying to pour molten pitch into leaky seams between planks, each seam rather less than quarter of an inch wide, in a force eight gale is somewhat akin to attempting to juggle ping-pong balls whilst standing in the downdraft of a helicopter. A stream of bubbling pitch carefully aimed at a newly raked out seam will unexpectedly slew sideways to decorate my newly sealed deck with a long string of tarry sine waves. I spend the next ten minutes scraping off rapidly solidifying pitch, then retire to my laptop as the next squall arrives. Days like this can make me long for the blue skies of summer. When trying to work outdoors on the water, winter offers relatively few advantages. It does offer others though. Whilst sun-kissed beaches and clear blue skies look pretty, I generally prefer my landscapes to look dramatic. Dark skies and storm clouds with shafts of sunlight breaking though are, to me, intrinsically more interesting. Very often the look of a landscape will change dramatically in seconds as cloud cover waltzes light and shade across the terrain. It’s the opportunity to capture these ephemeral patterns that makes me climb out of bed early on winter mornings, pile camera gear into the cab of my old Landrover and try to make it to my selected vantage point in time for sunrise. Okay, sometimes it does; and sometimes I’ll hit the ‘snooze’ button on my alarm, turn over and reassure myself there’ll be other mornings like this.

Landscape photography is one of the few areas where I still on occasion use film. In terms of workflow and cleanness of image 35mm film no longer compares with current DSLRs (to be brutal, spatial resolution, signal to noise ratio and even the old weakness of dynamic range are all better on good DSLRs than 35mm film equivalents), but there is something about producing images by initiating and influencing a chemical reaction on a medium you can touch and feel that has a magical quality about it. I no longer process my own film; cutting, mounting and scanning slides is enough of a chore. Yet exposing images on film still feels closer to the spirit of Louise and Auguste Lumiere’s autochromes or Hurley’s Paget Plates than allowing photons to kick electrons up the energy escalator in layers of silicon.

Given the wintry weather we (in the UK) are experiencing at the moment, I thought a local winter scene would be an appropriate image of the week. This one was taken a couple of years ago, on a chilly November afternoon on the Exeter canal near where it joins the Exe Estuary. The sun was getting fairly low and boat hulls were shining brightly against the dark water. It was very still, and where the canal widened to allow vessels to moor alongside, just in front of the first lock (the Turf Lock) a perfect mirror image of the moored boats reflected of the water. It may have rained later that day but I’m really not sure. It’s the moment I remember.
Link to image of the week Read More

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