Another wonderful trip with Bluewater Photo and their people. Had a good time out diving and got some good shots in. I was using my A6300 with dual strobes and the 16-50 lens. Next time I will be trying out my 18-70 f4 lens with the dome port and see how those shots go for me.
What dive trip to the big island would be complete without a Manta Night Dive. My wife, son, and I all did the Manta Dive with Jack’s Diving Locker. We did the late afternoon dive and then the Manta Dive after the sun set.
We met up with boat and took our Dramamine just to make sure that we didn’t get sick being out on the boat at night, with no horizon or reference point. Once the boat got to Keauhou Bay we then dropped into the water to do a dive while waiting for the sun to go down. This was a nice warm up dive for us and we we’re excited to see more of the big island from below. There wasn’t a lot of difference between diving here and diving in Oahu. We didn’t really see anything that we hadn’t seen before. We surfaced for about an hour and then descended down after dark hoping to see some mantas. We were not disappointed we had a couple that came around to visit us and swim through and eat. It was really a cool experience to see these majestic creatures swim through the water and effortless glide around and do loop de loops over us and around us.
While this is a dive done at night, it really isn’t. With all of the light above by people on surfboards, the baskets of lights on the sea floor, and all of the people down below with lights, it is basically brighter than the day. In fact when you swim around you see balls of light that I am pretty sure are brighter than the sun and just as blinding. So really you don’t need to be an advanced diver to do this dive, just the ability to dive should be enough to enable you to experience this truly exceptional experience.
Third last weekend I went diving on Anacapa island. Well rather beside the island and a little bit under it. Good trip taken with Bluewater Photo and on the Peace dive boat out of Ventura. The visibility wasn’t great, but the nudibranchs and other things were worth the trip. Below are some of the shots taken on my a6300 camera in the nautical housing with the 16-50 lens. Some I used the bwp macro lens attachment.
One of the houses in our neighborhood had a fire a few months ago. The house was gutted by the fire and had to rebuilt from the inside. I was out on one of my walks and happened by and thought it was an interesting image. If you look at it looks like i have removed the roof with photoshop with how cleanly it has been removed and the angle I am taking the shots at. However that isn’t the case, they were just in the process of rebuilding the roof and lifting the eves back up with a crane.
Happy with most of these, of course they could always be better and they will be at the next air show. Learned a lot shooting this time. Most of these were done with the Sony 70-400 lens on my a6300. Going to look at some of the other long lenses for my camera. I had to use the e to a mount adapter from Sony. All of it worked well there are some limitations, although those limitations could have been my own inexperience shooting planes in motion. Will know more the next time I shoot at an air show.
I did the early morning pass for the airshow again this year and I am finally getting through my shots. I took way too many of them and way too many duplicates, it has taken a few weeks since I don’t just have unlimited time to edit shots. Here are a few of the shots from the planes on the ground during the early morning shoot.
Some other shots while touring around New Orleans and enjoying ourselves. We did a swamp/bayou tour and saw some alligators. As we walked around we saw other things that we thought were cool.
