Macro Slideshow

Slideshow from the Red Sea

More aeroplane pictures

I shot some more pictures of the 'plane this morning early. The visibility was improved compared to last Monday, but the ambient light was still a little too dark to get the whole thing in

Shot in ambient light with a green water Magic filter. The pictures were processed in Lightroom 3 beta 2-the noise reduction features are amazing!

Sinking aeroplane slideshow!

Capernwray sinks an aeroplane slideshow from Adam Hanlon on Vimeo.

Underwater video of Capernwray Aeroplane-straight after sinking!

This is a rough cut of actual footage of G-BVOV underwater at Capernwray. It was shot on Monday 29th March 2010. The crane strops are still in place, and in actual fact, it was still being lowered onto the bottom of the quarry!

Some of this footage was used by Grenada and BBC North West on their evening bulletins.

Capernwray Diving sinks an aeroplane! from Adam Hanlon on Vimeo.

New Zen 100mm Dome port

Today I was lucky enough to be using the new Zen 100mm dome port today. It is definately softer in the corners than a big dome, but it's small size lets you get real close! Thanks to Alex for all his help with this

I teamed it up with a Tokina 10-17mm lens and a Kenko 1.4 x teleconverter, and could really see the magnification's effect on the subject. Lighting is critical though-my Inon strobes when correctly placed, didn't really leave enough room for my dry gloves!

The ability to get the subject so close is a definate advantage in terms of colour in green water. The subjects are much more vibrant out of the camera than they would be with a bigger dome etc.

While I was shooting, the sun went in, and I found that as I stopped down, the corner sharpness got worse!

Water temp was a cool 4 degrees!

Picture of the day on Flickr Fins Group

This picture was made picture of the day on the Flickr FINS group.



It was shot at Capernwray on a sunny day, with an air temperature of -7 degrees celsius, and a water temperature of 3/4 degrees. There was some ice on the surface!

Clear water in the UK

The cold weather and cold water combination has really cleared out the visibility at Capernwray. These were taken last Friday, water temperature was 3 degrees, air temperature -7!

Great viz!

Red Sea Pictures

I've managed to scale back my images from the trip to a more manageable number, and done the preliminary editing on them. I've put a gallery up here

Please bear in mind that there are still too many, and the quality on some of them is not as high as I would wish, but I felt I should get something out rather than nothing! The gallery will be changing and shrinking(!) with time. Any comments/feedback or likes and dislikes would be very welcome.

Sturgeon

Capernwray has 4 of these pre historic looking fish!



I think sometimes sci-fi is based on reality!

Moody black and white macro shots

I was lucky enough to be diving at Capernwray last Sunday. Congratualtions to Darryl Leaning on completing five PADI Instructor Specialities. It was a very busy day, that ensured limited visibility, together with rain and cloud making underwater conditions very gloomy.

I used the conditions to experiment with black background macro shots-by keeping my aperture small, and using only the light from my strobe to illuminate the subject. I then converted these into mono, using Lightroom.

I quite like the result-the perch loook like boxers to me! Kind of bruised but still with attitude!

Seth playing in the sea (and Jacob looking cute!)

I've added some pictures from earlier this summer to my pets and animals page on my web site We went down the the slipway at high tide on a sunny day and messed about! Seth enjoyed fetching his ball out of the waves an Jacob just chilled out being cute!

More 60mm f2.8 pictures

Some more shots from yesterday. The bokeh on this lens really impresses me

Gnarly old trout!

Congratulations to Scott Evans for completing his PADI Digital Underwater Photography and EANx specialities yesterday. DUP is of course an excellent excuse for me to get my camera in the water at the same time! I was trying out my "new" Nikkor 60mm f2.8. I got it at the same time as my 105mm VR and it has played second fiddle to the longer lens for a while. I have found that it is a REALLY sharp lens, that focuses fast and is a great length for fish portaits.

While diving with it yesterday here at Capernwray, I found this battered old brown trout. Trout, when they reach a certain age, develop a pronounced hook jaw (when they are called a kype), and in the last stages of their lives, darken in colour.

I've added more pictures from the day to my www site here

Slave strobes at Capernwray

A black and white shot from the shoot with Alex that I mentioned earlier!

More black and white seal shots from the Farne Islands

Black and White seal

Fantastic seal diving at the Farnes

As a part of Alex Mustard's Northern tour(!) we went to Northumberland to dive on the Farne Islands. This island chain is well known for it's playful seals and we went with the express intention of trying to photograph them. We joined Paul Walker's excellent rib and spent an amazing hour and a half playing, interacting and photographing these wonderful creatures. The first dive was characterised by seals biting and tugging on our fins, biting my dome port shade and strobes and generally showing how poor our buoyancy control and propulsion techniques are! Photographically, the conditions were perfect. Bright sunshine and shallow water, with relatively calm water made for some great scenic shots. I found getting the exposure correct challenging, the brightness of the surface was too great a contrast with the bottom. Camera angle relative to the sun, and framing are the key though!

The picture above is one of Alex's of me taking the mouth picture below! I'll feed more pictures from the dive onto this blog over the next few weeks. It was an amazing dive-world class!

Sepia tone in Lightroom

I took some trout pictures in Capernwray yesterday and whilst downloading them, started playing with the greyscale conversion in Lightroom and using the split toning function. One comment I have had about my Capernwray is that the pictures are too blue, so Ithought adding some greenish tint back into the black and white may work.

I'm not sure what do you think?