179 replies to this topic

[Drew]

Eric, the ocean safari beckons!

[Drew]

For more pics (if Andre ever gets off his butt and post some), Matti Ovaska, who was an alternate on the WP Ocean Safari but was referred to another operator also got to see some awesome action. His link to the pics are :
http://wetpixel.com/...showtopic=25874

Only thing is I don't know why they still call it the sardine run... most of the baitballs with the great visibility were redeye herring.

[pats0n]

Wow, Bryde's shots are awesome. Makes me want to go back ! Great job, Matti !


While we are waiting for Andrej I released few more pics in my blog -













I will put more eventually in the course of next few weeks, stay tuned !

Edited by pats0n, 04 August 2008 - 04:24 PM.

[Matti]

Hi There,

I wish i knew that the whale was going to come through the bait ball as there I was happily snapping away next moment there 10-15m of whale in front of me as I could have got a shot looking at the whale head on with its mouth wide open. One of the other guys on the trip got a great little video clip on his Canon Ixus which shows me taking photos with the whale lunging through the baitball (which I look at now again just to remind me how lucky I was. I was having some problems on the trip with the camera which would at times while in shutter priority force camera to f22 (no idea why, and it wouldn't always do it either). But I would have loved to see a Sailfish go through the ball so I might have to go back next year. There was one girl who joined the boat I was on for two days which were the days with the Brydes whale and another day with bait ball action and she did ask if it was always like this

Matti

http://www.mattiovaska.com

Edited by Matti, 24 August 2008 - 08:10 PM.

[Drew]

Matti, I missed the Bryde's going through 4 time which must be some kind of record! Sure 3 of those times it came from behind but seriously!
The billfish have been a feature in the last 2-3 years. Last year we had black marlin. I do believe the warmer conditions are bringing in the tropical predators. Since most of the baitfish were herrings when this all occurred (vs the sards which were much more prevalent before the big storm June 16th), it correlates with the warmer water temps. In the years we had great sardine action, the water temps were usually in the high teens, all the way to the surface, which suited the sardines. The herring don't mind the warmer conditions as much.
Btw, again I have to say, this year was a windfall year. Many a people would've killed for 1/5 of the action the last 2 years before this season.

[loftus]

It seems the torture of this thread will never end! Just amazing!

[Drew]

6 WP members read this thread 11k times, jeff. That's a record!
You can always block this thread out.

[loftus]

6 WP members read this thread 11k times, jeff. That's a record!
You can always block this thread out.

Yeah, I could, but it's like being on crack.

[Drew]

No no... that's such a street drug... the effects are much more subtle.... heroin or opium like... it's effects are slow but once you're hooked, you're not leaving. I should know. I haven't spent june/july anywhere else for a long time.

[Matti]

I will have to see if I can scam time away from work again next year, as I was in my new job for 5 months and I then disappear for 6 weeks and my boss kept on asking "When did I approve this leave?". My answer was don't worry about it as you had better get use to me disappearing on trips.

[pats0n]

Matti, I missed the Bryde's going through 4 time which must be some kind of record! Sure 3 of those times it came from behind but seriously!
The billfish have been a feature in the last 2-3 years. Last year we had black marlin. I do believe the warmer conditions are bringing in the tropical predators. Since most of the baitfish were herrings when this all occurred (vs the sards which were much more prevalent before the big storm June 16th), it correlates with the warmer water temps. In the years we had great sardine action, the water temps were usually in the high teens, all the way to the surface, which suited the sardines. The herring don't mind the warmer conditions as much.
Btw, again I have to say, this year was a windfall year. Many a people would've killed for 1/5 of the action the last 2 years before this season.

Well Drew, at least you did not miss bryde's with your eyes like I did - I'm glad Andrej has picture of bryde's passing behind me while I'm looking into opposite direction, always brings me a lot of laughs

Anyway, where is Andrej ? I believe he has fantastic images to show to us all. Meanwhile here is three more from my collection:

[pats0n]

And few more shots from recent batch I put to my blog:







For some photos I provide commentary on shooting technique I had to quickly adapt and to use in bait ball conditions - it would be interesting to hear about experiences of others. Drew, any killer tips you have from your shots this year ?

Edited by pats0n, 09 September 2008 - 03:45 PM.

[loftus]

For some photos I provide commentary on shooting technique I had to quickly adapt and to use in bait ball conditions - it would be interesting to hear about experiences of others. Drew, any killer tips you have from your shots this year ?

Thanks for the great photos and the info on technique; very interesting and potentially helpful. Though I'm sure I'd forget everything if I ever got caught up in something like this.

[pats0n]

Thanks for the great photos and the info on technique; very interesting and potentially helpful. Though I'm sure I'd forget everything if I ever got caught up in something like this.

Thank you ! Hints are pretty basic, I started that coz many readers of my blog asking about technique - there is nothing special about it obviously, just more of common sense thing. But I just wanted to provide account on my experience also hoping that someone is going to tell me what I was doing wrong or in unreasonably complicated way - something like that

Forgetting everything - happens all the time ! I lost a lot of potential shots of 5.5m tiger shark "Scarface" on Shark Reef in Beqa Lagoon couple of weeks ago simply because then I saw it I forgot about tracking my exposure parameters for few minutes - very professional =) !

[pats0n]

in case someone is still reading this thread - three more pictures from recent batch in my blog:

[loftus]

Still reading; great stuff.
What do you do in post-processing to get this almost monochromatic metallic look?

[PRC]

yup -still reading.

Would also like to know about the post processing steps that you are using here.

Awesome pics by way.

Paul C

[Drew]

This really is the thread that will not die. LOL
However if you guys are going to discuss post, please bring it to the appropriate forum so others will appreciate it.

[pats0n]

Thank you for your replies. Regarding postprocessing -

these are shots from the last day when we had 20m viz BUT overcast skies, and bait ball was relatively deep - we stayed about 12 m for the most of dive. All these conditions resulted in pretty dull lighting conditions, which in fact were more challenging then 10m viz with nice directed sunlight few days before that - "shiny" images from previous post are from that day.


For two close-up shots:
It was next to impossible to achieve any result without strobes and I had to keep aperture open (5.0-6.3) due to very dark conditions and lack of any contrast in background. My port sucks with open aperture, so this is why some images have this soft feeling in corners. Still most of images came underexposed a bit, so first step in processing was exposure correction about +0.7-1.0 EV. Second step is removing blue cast from shark/dolphins by decreasing "vibrance" parameter in Lightroom, little bit temperature change but Drew there is still no that bronze look on dolphins and sharks which I can see from shots above 5 meters - lighting is strong enough for proper color, I believe it has to do something with effect of water column even if it less then 1.5-2 meters thick. And last step is small contrast enhancement with "contrast" control in Lightroom, I did not even used curves. This shots have minor crop (< 5%) and due to good conditions there was no need for any scatter removal.

for shot with everyone chasing bait ball:
this one was VERY underexposed - things happened too quickly, and I had to do almost +1.7 EV correction in lightroom, and small "Vibrance" decrease. Next I used "Clarity" control to increase local contrast, in this kind of images it is very helpful to enhance small details like bird texture . Selective noise reduction in Noise Ninja, removal of scatter with Dust and Scratches filter, and finally crop - this one has about 5% cropped from the right and 10-15% from the bottom.

[pats0n]

Couple of more images I released to my blog - these two are not cropped and with minimum color correction: