Early Spring Macro

Posted on March 29, 2026 by An Bollenessor under crustaceans, eggs, fish, Flushing, Macro, molluscs, mzuiko60mm, nudibranchs, rock pooling, seaweeds, shells, snorkeling, worms

High time for a quick update. Spring has not started in earnest yet and so the number of days in the water have been limited. As is usual, I have practiced taking pics of Flat Periwinkles (Littorina obtusata or L. fabialis) on a bank of the Penryn River. Below that another set of pics taken in Flushing and Falmouth when it was too windy and choppy to get in the water. These were all taken with my cygnustech diffuser which give the pictures a quite distinctive, slightly subdued look.

I did go in the water a few days in a row when the weather and tides allowed it, which was great. I think one time I stayed in for three hours – my core temperature took some time to recover! No special finds and only a few good pics as my strobe placement had become quite rusty but here are the best and/or the most interesting ones. (Species names in the photo captions.) Bring on proper spring weather and flat seas!

Black Backgrounds

Posted on February 25, 2026 by An Bollenessor under cnidarians, fish, jellies, molluscs, photography

Last year I gravitated to macrophotography – in part because of the mostly bad viz, and in part because of the lack of outings to deeper/more interesting dive sites. Although through necessity, this was not really a problem, as biodiversity is greater at the small scale and I find macrophotography a bit easier than wide angle photography (especially as I am not usually floating through crystalclear, sunlit waters with many ‘charismatic’ animals). One macro trick is to use black backgrounds, avoiding the clutter of gravel, seaweed and assorted debris around the subject. For this you need to light the topic with a strobe and have open water behind it (which cannot be lit up and hence remains black). (Another strategy is using a snoot but I never managed to get that working…) Most recent posts feature examples of this technique but here are three pics I did not get round to posting. Descriptions of animals can be found in the captions.

The black background method also works for wideangle photography. As a bonus I am reposting a collection of old jellyfish photos.

Macro-Wide Angle (on land)

Posted on December 20, 2025 by An Bollenessor under fish, fluorescence, Macro, molluscs, wide angle

I really like macrophotography and I really like wide angle photography, but what I REALLY like is macro-wide angle photography! Examples of that underwater can be seen in previous posts (e.g. here and here) but this year I also bought a normal ‘topside’ lens for this purpose: the kuangren k42. It is a difficult lens to use: it is manual focus and it is very (VERY) dark. The first few times trying it out I was almost ready to give it up – that is how hard it was to get a usable photo out of it. With a lot of perseverance I narrowed down the combination of camera and lens settings but there is a lot of practice to be done next year. (Ideally I’d also have two flashes on bendy arms instead one mounted on top of the camera to properly light the subject.) Anyway, above a White Italian Snail which has a bunch of other common names so the Latin one is always best: Theba pisana. It is not all in focus (the eyestalks are not a friend of DoF) but the perspective does manage to show both the (small) animal and its habitat which is otherwise impossible to do. I have also tried the lens a bit closer to the water, some examples below. I have since purchased another kuangren lens and hope to also experiment with – and blog about – that next year!

The Crack pt. 1

Posted on October 5, 2025 by An Bollenessor under crustaceans, diving, EMWL, fish, Silver Steps

At my local shoredive site Silver Steps here in Falmouth, there is a crack in the rocks, maybe three meters long and not very deep, that is home to an array of interesting species. I have posted pics from this spot before, for instance that of a big conger eel (which has since left it’s hidey-hole, perhaps it swam off to reproduce and die in the Mid-Atlantic?). Anyway, I visited again this week and tried close-up shots with my macrowide angle probe lens. The prawns are much bigger here in the rock pools, but I am not sure if they are Paleamon serratus or P. elegans, as this requires a closer look at the serrations on the rostrum. Regardless of species name, they are stunningly beautiful animals with their blue and yellow legs and black-striped carapace.

Some more pics below (notice that in some another animal is lurking in the background!). Some species are easier to photograph than others, clingfish are very shy for instance. Anyway, there are some more ideas I have, for instance trying to capture multiple species in one frame and post about them in ‘The Crack pt2.’!

Moody Macro

Posted on September 27, 2025 by An Bollenessor under crustaceans, fish, Flushing, Macro, mzuiko60mm, rock pooling

A quick post with some finds from a recent walk on the shores of Flushing, specifically above-water (‘topside’) macro shots with a diffuser. This always leads to my subjects turning out with subdued grey and brown tones, but that is OK. A velvet crab, the amphipod *Cymodoce truncata* (looks a bit like a trilobite!), a worm pipefish covered in a film of water with some more shots (with descriptions) at the end.

Blennies

Posted on August 30, 2025 by An Bollenessor under fish, Macro, mzuiko60mm, snorkeling

A trip to one of my favourite spots on the North Coast, Booby’s Bay, two weekends back led to a fun rockpool photography sesh. The pools here are quite different than in Falmouth: deeper, more exposed and with fewer seaweeds (see here for impressions). Shannies (Common Blennies) and Montagu’s Blennies are abundant here and I chose not to seach for things ‘more special’ but take pics of these characterful fish. Shannies are greyish and common, but actually very beautiful as you can see above. Their mottled, slimy (scale-less) skin also makes them very well-camouflaged as is clear from the photo below.

Below a few more pics, including of Montagu’s Blennies, which have a ‘quiff’. Some of these fish have hatched not too long ago and are tiny (<1 cm)! When I took these pics the weather was great (and I ditched the wetsuit) but as I am writing this post it is raining and blowing outside. My snorkel outings will be less frequent from now on unfortunately, but on the plus side my blogging will pick up….

Back to Silver Steps

Posted on August 19, 2025 by An Bollenessor under diving, fish, Macro, molluscs, nudibranchs, Silver Steps, worms

With the camera housing back, I have been in the water again lately, taking quite a few photos. I am lagging behind with posting quite a bit (this will allow me to post when I cannot get in the water later in the year) but should occasionally maintain the blog over summer, so here is! My local haunt Silver Steps provided during two dives with the macro lens. Above a Twin Fan Worm (Bispira volutacornis). These are quite shy (i.e. they retract into their parchment-like tube when their composite eyes detect a curious diver) but also are attached to cluttered rock walls. To blur this unappealing background, I used a very shallow depth of field (f 2.8); this also has the advantage of letting a lot of light in so ISO can be decreased to 100 – sorry non-photographers!). Below a collage of other ‘usual suspects’ (names under the photos) but ALSO I SPOTTED AN OCTOPUS! Crouched in a crevice and with only a macro lens I could not do it justice but it was still a very nice encounter.

Two Fish in Flushing

Posted on March 11, 2025 by An Bollenessor under eggs, fish, Flushing, rock pooling

Continuing the theme from the two last posts with some ‘topside’ photos of rockpools. We had a very low tide recently which called for some rockpooling on our local shore here in Flushing. We looked (as always) for anything that we could find, but trying to get some ‘close-focus-wide-angle’ pics of fish with the Panasonic Leica 9mm lens was the main aim. Above a Male Tompot guarding eggs (see pic below) as well as a male Connemara Clingfish (no eggs spotted), recognizable by the bright red cheek markings. I have not been underwater very much, but have a bunch of macro photos of snails and stalked jellyfish that I will put on the blog next. (And remember, I post more frequently on instagram: @an_bollenessor!)

Fish Portraits

Posted on February 7, 2025 by An Bollenessor under fish, Flushing, Macro, rock pooling

Last weekend the weather was rubbish but the tide was low, and so we went over to our local beach in Flushing for some rock pooling. I did not bring the underwater housing, but just the macro lens and my cygnustech diffuser. Above a little clingfish – this could either be a Two-spotted or a Small-headed Clingfish; they are very hard to tell apart if they are not breeding males (see pic below for scale, I had to use the extra magnification of the Raynox clip-on lens for this one). Below three other fish species: a Tompot Blenny, a Common Blenny (or Shanny) and a Montagu’s Blenny (which is from an earlier post, but I wanted to complete the set here).