Most of the staff arrived today and yesterday on flights from various parts of the United States along with an intrepid group of early-bird participants eager to get in the water with their cameras. Although the shootout doesn’t officially start until tomorrow, more than half the guests are already here. Serge, the manager of the dive shop at our host resort (the Divi Flamingo), gave a morning briefing on local dive policies and logistics, and by noon some of our participants had already spent a couple of hours in the water…

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On a recent trip to Little Cayman, Wetpixel administrator James Wiseman decided to try the technique of complementary filters. With a magenta filter on the camera lens and green filters on his strobes, James found that foreground lighting could appear normal while enriching the blue water background, and that the typical cyan ring around ‘sun-balls’ or ‘sunbursts’ was reduced or eliminated altogether.

James wrote an article about the results, and includes photos to provide a comparison of each filter/strobe/ambient light combination. “Complementary filter photography at first sounds pretty complicated, but it’s really easy to get started…after trying it one just one trip, I am completely hooked…”

Continue for all of his observations…

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We’ve just had a single cancellation for the 2007 Wetpixel Solomon Islands Expedition.  The Solomon Islands are one of my favorite dive destinations, and offer everything from tiny pygmy seahorses to huge barracuda tornados. The topography (both topside and underwater) is absolutely breath-taking, and the crew and guides on the Bilikiki are some of the best I’ve encountered.  Check out the full trip details if you’re interested—and book soon!  There is only one spot free.

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Congratulations to Wetpixel member Dean Burman (DeanB) whose success with his award-winning natural history film Lair of the Water Wolf, about pike, has seen him on BBC TV and Radio and the subject of an article in the UK’s Dive Magazine. Dean’s expertise in filming the behaviour of pike has also led to him recently assisting on a new BBC Natural History Unit production ‘Nature of Britain’. Dean is pictured (right) with series presenter Alan Titchmarsh, look out for it in the autumn.

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The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is considering adding two additional species to their protected list, the porbeagle and spiny dogfish sharks. The issue will be voted on this weekend, but among the 171 members countries, some of the most influential - Canada, New Zealand, and the United States - are considering opposing the proposal to restrict trade of these species.

Rob Stewart, director of Sharkwater, has requested help in contacting government officials of each of the countries in an effort to win approval for the proposal. Voice your support for protection of these sharks with the email form at SavingSharks.com.

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