As I mentioned in the last post, I joined instagram (@an_bollenessor). One one hand it is a great way of getting inspired, on the other hand it is a bit disheartening: why even bother trying to get half-decent shots with so many fantastic photos already produced? One interesting observation though is that there are some very commonly used themes (macro photos of nudibranchs, open water photos of big pelagics, close-ups of colourful sedentary species such as frogfish) but there are few people who try to take photos of seaweeds, so that seems a quite open niche at least. I have a lot of photos on my computer from the past few years of blogging and am uploading these on my account before the weather gets better and I can go out again. Some are Canon Powershot D30, some Canon G16 but mostly iPhone4S, including the ones in this post (and so all taken above-water). A few other things have inspired me photography-wise recently. I attended a talk by Mark Webster on his Cornish underwaterphotography at the Poly in Falmouth. I already had his excellent book ‘Beneath Cornish Seas‘, but it was very interesting to hear him talk about his approach. See here for some his excellent photos. (I also learned of a very large rockpool on Treyarnon beach that seems excellent for photography and I really need to check out.) Last Christmas, Santa gave me Alex Mustard’s ‘Underwater Photography Masterclass‘ book, which not only has beautiful photos but also is very well written. Already some time ago, I bought a copy of ‘In The Company Of Seahorses‘ by Steve Trewhella and Julie Hatcher (which has an associated facebook page). A beautiful hardcover ‘coffee table’ book with very knowledgeable accompanying text on seahorses in the UK as well as many of the animals they share their habitat with: highly recommended!