Sea Kayaking today

Caron and I went out for a paddle today. Force 5-6 winds limited our duration, but I actually managed to do some surfing in our new P&H Quest.

Marine Life Keywords for Lighroom or Aperture

One of the key problems that we as digital photographers face is keeping track of the vast numbers of images we produce. I took 10000 images last year, and remembering what I took when is a challenge. This results in missed opportunities for selling images, and frustrations in trying to view them!

I have found a solution for my underwater ones at least-keywording. By purchasing the Marine Life Keywords list, this will giva you a great head start into catalogueing and organising. This list of marine life species allows you to easily group your images into family or species group, allowing the amazing search functions in Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture to find your images.

It is now available to purchase ($99)-just click here!

Watch out for the humpback

More from the fantastic BBC Natures Great events series!

The DVD is out now on amazon. If anyone would like to buy me a (very) early Christmas present!

Diving yesterday

Antony Gatrell completed his Instructor Speciality courses with me at Capernwray yesterday. We were joined by Dave Morgan, and between us hence had three cameras on the go. It was a pretty bright day, so ideal for wide angle, so I chose to use a 105mm VR macro lens! Still quite like the results-I wasn't sure about the leaf picture, but I do quite like it!

Getting lost with Roger

David Kneale, Michael Ashworth and I put our faith in Roger Heron's usually keen sense of direction when we set out to do a Multilevel Adventure Dive last Saturday here at Capernwray. The plan was simplicity itself, so David and I tooled up with cameras and promised to be "bad buddies" while Roger and Michael led the way.

Well we turned left instead of right, and had a memorable dive along the weed festooned walls in "dappled" sunlight. It was very pretty, and we managed to save things at the last momment by re-tracing our steps. It was a great dive (even if not the planned one!)

Another awesome Baracuda image

BALI-14
Originally uploaded by Christian Loader

Another of Christian Loader's amazing images

Baracuda Teeth

BALI-13
Originally uploaded by Christian Loader

Amazing picture from Christian Loader!

Flickr wetpixel group

I have been quite active on Flickr for some time, and like it as a place to put pictures that I would like to show to a larger audience than I might get on my web site alone. It is a social place, and getting and giving feedback is great for the soul (and ego!)

I have recently been made an admin for the wetpixel group on Flickr. This is a spin off from the great Wetpixel main site here. We have a great group of admins, who have some ideas to make this group the best underwater photography site on Flickr.

If you haven't joined Flickr yet, click here. It is free and a great place to view fantastic images of all descriptions

Sunny walk around Heysham HDR images

Last Monday, I went out for a walk around the Barrows at Heysham. It was a beautiful sunny day, but there was a strong wind blowing. The contrast in the woods was very stark, so I made my first attempts at HDR images. These are the result of 5 pictures, at +2 and -2 exposures, blended via Photomatix pro. The colours are amazingly vivid, although the wind has caused some leaf movement, and hence some ghosting.

Black and white moray images aka Monster

Monster
Originally uploaded by andythirlwell

What a fantastic Image.