Tag Archives: Macro

More Macro

Posted on by under eggs, Macro, molluscs, nudibranchs

Has ‘an bollenessor’ turned into a macro photography-only blog? It seems so, I have not posted about my aquarium in ages. I still end up doing macrophotography when I go rockpooling. I tried wide-angle photography last week in the rockpools and failed miserably (so no photos for the blog). I hope to mix it up later in the year but for the moment here are some more macro photos. Above a picture I am quite pleased with: a solar-powered seaslug Elysia viridis on its favourite food the green seaweed Codium with some nice orange seaweed as a background. The pictures below show the snail Raphitoma purpurea (a first for me in Cornwall), the nudibranch Okenia nodosa (a lifer for me), a European Cowrie Trivia monacha and a patch of goby eggs (sans goby-egg eating seaslugs unfortunately).

I am a bit stuck in a limbo where on one hand I want to see interesting, new species and take good ID pictures (for recording on iNaturalist and sharing on facebook groups), but on the other hand I have gone a bit above my station and developed an interest in taking more ‘arty’ photos such as the solar-powered seaslug one at the top of this post. Sometimes the two aims converge. sometimes not. As an illustration of that, below a few shots of the nudibranch Polycera quadrilineata that ended up quite differently: a ‘good for ID’ photo but with an ugly cluttered background, a more arty photo (although the bokeh effect is due to backscatter and it is actually not that great), an overall ‘nice’ photo (posted before), a ‘shore studio’ shot of a slug (more about that in the next post) and an artsy fartsy version of a studio shot where the highlight have been so blown out that the slug basically is shown as a set of yellow stripes. I must say I can have ideas about how to take a certain shot, but my general approach is still ‘spray and pray’!

Early Spring Macro

Posted on by 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 by 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.

What is a seaslug?

Posted on by under Macro, molluscs, nudibranchs, worms

A nudibranch, a snail and a seaslug crawl into a bar…no seriously, what actually is the difference between these three types of molluscs? According to Kerney and Cameron (1979), those animals that cannot fit into their shell are called slugs, and those that can are called snails (definition brought under my attention by Ian Smith, see his amazing species accounts of British molluscs on flickr: Morddyn). Seaslugs either have an outer shell in which they cannot retract, an internal shell or no shell at all. The Solar-powered seaslug (Elysia viridis) pictured above is a species without a shell that is an example of a seaslug. Nudibranchs are a type of seaslug with ‘naked’ (nudi) gills (branchs) on their back. Nudibranchs never have a shell (although many have one when they are a larva). Books on nudibranchs often include seaslugs and sometimes they even feature snails! This happens when these species are related to seaslugs (the ‘lathe acteon’ or ‘beer barrel’ Acteon tornatilis is an example of that – a goal of this year is to take a good photo of that species). I have posted a range of photos on here as an illustrations of seaslugs (or not!); read the captions for species info.

Candy striped flatworm Prostheceraeus vittatus

Rainbow Seaslug

Posted on by under molluscs, nudibranchs, snorkeling
See here the find I alluded to in the last post: a Rainbow Seaslug! When turning rocks last Monday, on a cold but sunny (and rainy) afternoon, a multi-coloured blob (see below) immediately caught my attention. This is only the second time I found one (the first time I did not have my camera to hand) so I was very excited. This species (Babakina anadoni) is not only over-the-top in its colouration but also a newcomer to British shores, having only been reported for the first time in the Scillies in 2022 and on mainland Britain in 2023 (on the very same shore here in Falmouth). It now is sighted regularly so seems to be establishing itself.

Because it was only a few degrees I had opted for rockpooling instead of snorkeling, but as this was my chance, I left the overturned rock to walk back to the carch, ange into my wetsuit and run back. By gently lowering the rock in a pool I was able to take underwater photos. (Some people manage to submerge their camera only when they are out in waders but that approach just does not work for me.) Seaslugs are fairly slow but small (this one was maybe 15 mm) so it is not easy to photograph them. I always go through many aperture/ISO/shutterspeed/strobe output combinations before shots become acceptable. One way of shooting nudis is to use a very small aperture to get as much of the animal in focus, another is to use a larger aperture to only have (parts of) the head in focus, leaving behind the often cluttered background. I am still figuring out what works best for me!

Seagrass Macro

Posted on by under anemones, bryozoans, eelgrass, Flushing, Macro, molluscs, mzuiko60mm, nudibranchs, photography, tunicates
Polycera quadrilineata

I had a couple of good snorkels at the end of summer in the seagrass beds off my local beach in Flushing. The water at the end of summer is warm enough to go without wetsuit – I just had a weightbelt to let me sink down on the sand at low tide, no fins needed. I managed to do what I normally find very difficult: spot nudibranchs! Mainly one of the more common species, Polycera quadrilineata, but that was fine by me, as they are very beautiful, especially the black colour morph pictured above. I spotted one other species, the egg-eating Favorinus branchialis (with its own eggs also visible). Not great photos, but in my defense they are very small!

Shelled molluscs are easier to find. Below 1) the ubiquitous Grey Topshell Steromphala cinerarea, 2) the Grooved Topshell Jujubinus striatus and 3) the tiny Rissoa membranacea (faecal pellets on show, even within the shell). The latter two species are strongly associated with seagrass.

Some assorted macro photos below and at the end a view at a very low tide of the Flushing seagrass site this October.

Blennies

Posted on by 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 by 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.

Periwinkles

Posted on by under Macro, molluscs

Long time no post – the idea was to spend time taking photos during spring and summer and enjoy the underwater world vicariously by blogging in autumn and winter. However, something terrible happened on my only dive of 2025: my underwater housing sprung a leak! The housing was not flooded to an extent that it damaged my camera but it needed to be repaired before I could get back underwater. Unfortunately there is only one place that can do that, backscatter all the way in California, and even more unfortunately, U.S. customs decided to keep my package on a shelf for over a month. I have never seen an octopus in my decade of diving but of course people reported eight or so per dive last month so I was feeling very sorry for myself!* Anyway, I have been confined to the shoreline so far. To cope with that, I bought a weird chinese macro-wide angle lens to play with which I will post about later. I also used my ‘normal’ 60mm macro lens (sometimes with a Raynox lens attached to the front for extra magnification) and took some time to focus on periwinkles.

At the top and below a Flat Periwinkle (Littorina obtusata or maybe L. fabialis – distinguishing is very hard as it requires investigating differences in penis shape!). As you can see the locations are not always glamorous, but if you zoom in you can still find beauty!

Flat periwinkles tend to be most active above-water, followed by the smaller Rough Periwinkle (Littorina saxatilis – below) with the Common Periwinkle (Littorina littorea – below that) only occasionally moving about.

Finally, a tiny species the Small Periwinkle (Littorina Melharaphe neritoides). Probably overlooked by most, as it is tiny (up to 8mm, usually smaller) and hidden between barnacles (or even nestled in empty barnacle cases) high on the shore.

* and no, I could not bring myself to go diving without a camera…