If you’ve been following along, you know that I’m not a cave diver or a wreck diver. Well, on the Palau trip, check and check. Caves and wrecks. And not so bad. (Thanks Alex.)
On this one, I was looking around for some nice fish or other lovely ocean dweller framed by railings, superstructure or whatnot (but for real — not made in photoshop like this one — seriously, go take a look, I’ll wait).
And then I saw this. It looked to me like a pirate’s treasure chest. The yellow coral on the lip even looked like golden doubloons overflowing from the chest. All of those other little bits and pieces — gems, orbs and more. So cool. I shot it from a bunch of angles and ultimately liked this one the best.
But it still wasn’t quite what I had in mind. Too much exposure to Disney animated movies and Saturday morning cartoons had made me want something with super saturated colors. And at the image review where I showed this people suggested having lights shining out of the chest. Genius! That would look like something Scooby would have encountered. (If only the Mystery Machine were wrecked down there too.)
Ok, just one problem with that plan. No way I was going to go into the wreck to show lights up through the hole. Because, just like on a movie set. The “chest” wasn’t really a chest. It was some sort of access point with a lid but no floor. Alex very nicely volunteered to put one of my lights down there and then we both shot it. He might have gotten a good one. But I wasn’t happy with the result. I think I needed more lights and more lumens per light. Now if only it had been at night…
Dive site: Dexter’s Wall, Palau
Shot at 1/200th at f/8 with Olympus OMD EM5, 8mm Panasonic fisheye lens in Nauticam housing and mini dome port, no strobes.