Below - Underwater photography in Alor, Indonesia
With some of the most pristine and untouched reefs I've ever seen, it's no wonder Alor has me going back year after year. As some of you are aware, about six months ago I finally picked up a housing for the camera after years of mental gymnastics on why I wasn’t going to do just that. Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Creating and shooting while diving has been a such a good overlap of the venn diagram. I’m here for it and I reckon eating those words has been less than bitter.
The boys at Air Dive come with the same macro nerd energy I’ve come to embrace while diving, so the hunt was on for the small, the weird, the bizarre. High fives were had and scientific names thrown about. While Alor is known for its currents and big topography, it’s macro life is world class. From Rhinopias to rare symbiotic relationships to all the alien-like nudibranches, i’m never not awe inspired at what the ocean has just beneath the surface.
With some of the most pristine and untouched reefs I've ever seen, it's no wonder Alor has me going back year after year. As some of you are aware, about six months ago I finally picked up a housing for the camera after years of mental gymnastics on why I wasn’t going to do just that. Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Creating and shooting while diving has been a such a good overlap of the venn diagram. I’m here for it and I reckon eating those words has been less than bitter.
The boys at Air Dive come with the same macro nerd energy I’ve come to embrace while diving, so the hunt was on for the small, the weird, the bizarre. High fives were had and scientific names thrown about. While Alor is known for its currents and big topography, it’s macro life is world class. From Rhinopias to rare symbiotic relationships to all the alien-like nudibranches, i’m never not awe inspired at what the ocean has just beneath the surface.
All shot with my sony kit in a Seafrogs housing with Kraken strobes
Travel Diary: Alor, Indonesia - Above
Another trip to Alor and carrying along my underwater kit this time around. Instead of showing images from above and below the surface together and throwing everything and the kitchen sink, I’m going to divide these up into two parts. As you can probably guess, this first part will be topside images i shot with my trusty little Fuji and part two will be all the wonderful little critters below. It’s always nice shooting old places and familiar faces as well as shooting with new perspectives. These are all from Alor kecil, specifically, and were taken on little 30 minute wanders before a heading out to dive for the day.
Another trip to Alor and carrying along my underwater kit this time around. Instead of showing images from above and below the surface together and throwing everything and the kitchen sink, I’m going to divide these up into two parts. As you can probably guess, this first part will be topside images i shot with my trusty little Fuji and part two will be all the wonderful little critters below. It’s always nice shooting old places and familiar faces as well as shooting with new perspectives. These are all from Alor kecil, specifically, and were taken on little 30 minute wanders before a heading out to dive for the day.
Travel Diary: Quick stopover in Amed
I headed back to Alor recently and had a couple days on the way back in Bali. So I popped up to Amed to see some friends and a couple of dives just to nerd out on the little critters. Between me being a bit new at this whole underwater photography thing and the general nature of shooting underwater, the keeper rate is usually a bit lower than what I shoot on land. That being said, back to back dives on Batuniti up in Tulamben delivered in spades. I didn’t think I’d have enough to fill a blog post, but between the Mt. Agung sunsets and all the little aliens coming out to say hello under the surface, I couldn’t help but show you.
I headed back to Alor recently and had a couple days on the way back in Bali. So I popped up to Amed to see some friends and a couple of dives just to nerd out on the little critters. Between me being a bit new at this whole underwater photography thing and the general nature of shooting underwater, the keeper rate is usually a bit lower than what I shoot on land. That being said, back to back dives on Batuniti up in Tulamben delivered in spades. I didn’t think I’d have enough to fill a blog post, but between the Mt. Agung sunsets and all the little aliens coming out to say hello under the surface, I couldn’t help but show what I found.
Keep on the look out for the Alor post as I shot quite a bit more and the cull is taking longer. It’s always the longest and trickiest part of the whole process for me. I fall in love with a series of images and realise that not all of them can make the cut. But you know, maybe I’ll post the series and you can let me know what you think in the next post which images stay and which ones get escorted back to the hard drive to keep the others company.
Above
Below
Saigon Punk Chronicles : Haywire
Boston Heavyhitters, Haywire made their way to Saigon last week on their world tour and I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been stoked on this one for a minute. Watching them blow up over the course of the last couple of years is wild, so having them in town was stellar. The line up was stacked with local legends, Cut Lon, 9xactly, Elbowdrop and Happyco. I missed Happyco, so forgive me, guys. It’s so good to see a scene grow with multiple bands holding it down for Saigon. Many a stage dive, many a high five and many a singalong were had. I hadn’t been to show for a while so it was great catching up with all the old homies. Enough chit chat. Here’s the flicks.
Boston Heavyhitters, Haywire made their way to Saigon last week on their world tour and I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been stoked on this one for a minute. Watching them blow up over the course of the last couple of years is wild, so having them in town was stellar. The line up was stacked with local legends, Cut Lon, 9xactly, Elbowdrop and Happyco. I missed Happyco, so forgive me, guys. It’s so good to see a scene grow with multiple bands holding it down for Saigon. Many a stage dive, many a high five and many a singalong were had. I hadn’t been to show for a while so it was great catching up with all the old homies. Enough chit chat. Here’s the flicks.
Elbowdrop
9xactly
Haywire
Cut Lon
Travel Diary: Dauin, Philippines
I’ve been shooting underwater lately which makes me wonder if these posts need a new name. Travel Diary still works, I guess. But the pictures are certainly different now. Half of them are underwater. Half of them aren’t. So maybe it needs a new monicker? We’ll see.
In any case, I found myself back on the road again, this time headed to the quiet outpost of Dauin to keep working on my personal project, Below. Within diving circles this little stretch of coastline in the Philippines is pretty well known for the small, the strange, and the bizarre. If you’re not familiar with the term “muck diving” let me break it down for you. You drop down, hover over a patch of sand, and wait. At first it looks like nothing. Just dirt and rubble and the occasional shell. Not exactly the stuff of postcards or the nonsense we scroll through on whatever social media platform.
I’ve been shooting underwater lately which makes me wonder if these posts need a new name. Travel Diary still works, I guess. But the pictures are certainly different now. Half of them are underwater. Half of them aren’t. So maybe it needs a new monicker? We’ll see.
In any case, I found myself back on the road again, this time headed to the quiet outpost of Dauin to keep working on my personal project, Below. Within diving circles this little stretch of coastline in the Philippines is pretty well known for the small, the strange, and the bizarre. If you’re not familiar with the term “muck diving” let me break it down for you. You drop down, hover over a patch of sand, and wait. At first it looks like nothing. Just dirt and rubble and the occasional shell. Not exactly the stuff of postcards or the nonsense we scroll through on whatever social media platform.
Then something moves. A frogfish. A shrimp. Something that looks like a leaf but isn’t.
The ocean has a sense of humor like that. Half the things down there look like cartoons or aliens or mistakes that somehow kept evolving.
Dauin topside consists of quiet beaches, palms reaching for the clouds, and long slow afternoons that seem to last for days if not weeks. After what was an extremely busy run up to Lunar New Year, it was a pretty ideal place to decompress for a bit. Some of those projects will make their way onto the blog soon enough, but for now let’s stick with the critters and some vignettes of a genuinely beautiful corner of the planet.
One thing I’m quickly learning about underwater photography is that it requires a fair bit of gear. So… that means I’m still trying to figure out the whole equation of what comes with me and what stays home. My original plan was to shoot on land and underwater with the Sony kit. In theory that works. In reality, different story.
Shooting underwater. Pulling the camera out of the housing. Swapping lenses. Shooting on land. Putting the camera back in the housing. Sealing everything back up again. Get back in the water. Repeat. Every. Single. Time.
After faffing about with that whole nightmare a couple of times, a new approach was necessary. The Sony stays in the underwater housing and the Fuji X100V takes care of everything happening above the surface. Whether that turns out to be a sensible long term solution or if I’ve just permanently complicated my life by jumping into underwater photography remains to be seen. If anyone has any advice on wrangling this circus clown of a situation, leave it in the comments below. I’d love to hear your insight.
So until I figure out what to call these types of posts, I’ll divide it into Above and Below. Bit on the nose, but here we are.
Above.
Below.
Travel Diary: Amed Indonesia - My first jump into Underwater Photography
As most of you know, I’m a pretty big nerd when it comes to scuba diving and love hunting for the small and weird. I’ve been hesitant to even go down the road of underwater photography because I know how expensive that road is going to be, but I borrowed a little Olympus tg-4 from a friend of mine and played with it over the course of the last week while diving in Amed, Bali. While I’m fully aware of the limitations of this set up. Just practicing with lighting was so fun. My hesitance to drop the coin on a proper housing for my camera is starting to show cracks and I’m tempted. That said, traveling light may be a thing of the past if choose to go down this road.
As most of you know, I’m a pretty big nerd when it comes to scuba diving and love hunting for the small and weird. I’ve been hesitant to even go down the road of underwater photography because I know how expensive that road is going to be, but I borrowed a little Olympus tg-4 from a friend of mine and played with it over the course of the last week while diving in Amed, Bali. While I’m fully aware of the limitations of this set up, just practicing with lighting was so fun. My hesitance to drop the coin on a proper housing for my camera is starting to show cracks and I’m tempted. That said, traveling light may be a thing of the past if choose to go down this road.
These images aren’t perfect…. or whatever perfect means. Some of them are a bit noisy, a channel clips here and there, some of them may not be as sharp as I’d like, but I had too much fun to not share these. I’m still a complete novice when it comes to this whole thing so here we are. If anyone has a contact at Nauticam that wants to sponsor this whole foray, let me know!
Recent Work: Nonn Furniture - Part 1
Over the last few months, the team at Nonn and I have been shooting nearly nonstop to the point where I’ve not had the time to even look at the final images, let alone find the time to post about them. For context, we started in July…. But here we are and instead of going the normal route of showing the entire shoot, the time elapsed in between then and now has allowed for a grouping of images from each scene we shot. I think having that cohesive thread through the post is interesting so we’ll go in multiple parts here. We shot some vastly different styles for different sets, so I hope you find the contrasts interesting in the parts to come. I’m also going to try a different format for showing these images off as I’m in need for some change. Let me know what you think. Anyways, enough prattling on. For now, though, check out the slick designs and head on over to Nonn to pick up some of these beautiful pieces.
Over the last few months, the team at Nonn and I have been shooting nearly nonstop to the point where I’ve not had the time to even look at the final images, let alone find the time to post about them. For context, we started in July…. But here we are and instead of going the normal route of showing the entire shoot, the time elapsed in between then and now has allowed for a grouping of images from each scene we shot. I think having that cohesive thread through the post is interesting so we’ll go in multiple parts here. We shot some vastly different styles for different sets, so I hope you find the contrasts interesting in the parts to come. I’m also going to try a different format for showing these images off as I’m in need for some change. Let me know what you think. Anyways, enough prattling on. For now, though, check out the slick designs and head on over to Nonn to pick up some of these beautiful pieces.
Recent Work: Tolv
Back in the studio with the folks from Tolv and we set out to make some more clean images to round out their website. I’ve been quite busy these past few months that I’m just now getting a chance to release these out in to the wild as we shot these over the summer. These images are a bit of a directors cut as well as some outtakes, but I love showing all the things that come out of shoots, so you can let me know which ones you like and see if you can spot the outliers. As always we shot these with an Elinchrom lighting set up that consisted of lots of scrims, flags and some fill here and there.
Back in the studio with the folks from Tolv and we set out to make some more clean images to round out their website. I’ve been quite busy these past few months that I’m just now getting a chance to release these out in to the wild as we shot these over the summer. These images are a bit of a directors cut as well as some outtakes, but I love showing all the things that come out of shoots, so you can let me know which ones you like and see if you can spot the outliers. As always we shot these with an Elinchrom lighting set up that consisted of lots of scrims, flags and some fill here and there.
