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.’!
I recently posted on the Crustaceans inhabiting my local shore dive site Silver Steps (see here), but left out one species: the Scorpion Spider Crab (Inachus spp.), which deserves a post on its own. I have blogged about this crab before (see here), specifically in the context of ‘macro-wide angle’ for which this species, perched on- or under a snakelocks anemone, is ideally suited. My previous efforts were based on an affordable inon wetlens, but I have since bought a super-duper nauticam lens. Although very good at macro-wide angle, this lens lets in very little light, which basically gives you three options: 1) lie on some bright white coral sand in the Maldives and shoot upwards to the sun at midday (so actually not really an option), 2) increasingly compromise the exposure triangle to keep a blueish/greenish background (higher ISO>more noise, lower shutterspeed>more camera shake, greater aperture>smaller depth of field), or 3) keep all settings in a ‘normal’ range, resulting in a foreground lit up by strobes on maximum output, but a black background (only if you are shooting critters in rock crevices you can get both fore- and background well-exposed, as strobe light has something to bounce back from – see for some examples the Crustaceans post). I quite like the clean black background and dislike bluer, but grainier images, so have mainly tried option 3. Hopefully, next year in summer I can try going for some blue background shots. Sorry if this blog is occasionally turning into a photography borefest by the way, but I have been really getting into that stuff! ;-). Anyway, these scorpion spider crab pics have turned out quite nicely.
An Bollenessor 