... let's go diving!
As soon as my summer vacation began we took off to CoCo View Resort on the island of Roatan, Honduras, in the Caribbean. We would be meeting four other friends there for a week of warm water diving. This was our fifth trip to CoCo View in as many years, and we keep going back because the diving is good (by Caribbean standards) and easy with short boat rides to scores of different sights.
We boarded a TACA red-eye flight out of SFO and arrived at the resort in time for lunch the next day. Although the timing of the flight was not ideal, it gave us plenty of time to do two dives that afternoon, and thoroughly get into "vacation mode." I did a total of 26 dives that week and carried my camera with me on most of them in an effort to get in some good photography practice.
In addition to the standard Caribbean critters (puffers, eels, damselfish, angelfish, etc.) I saw a small school of squid, a jawfish holding eggs in his mouth, way too many invasive lionfish, and a large nurse shark. Out of the 70 dives I've done around Roatan, this was the first shark I have seen there (with the exception of the time we went on a shark feeding dives). Contrast that to Cocos Island, where we saw multiple sharks - often scores - on every single dive. Sadly, the lack of sharks and other large fish is typical for the Caribbean, where they have been all but fished out.
All in all it was a good week with good diving spent with good people.
Photography notes: I took my 15mm fisheye lens down on a few dives, and then shot macro for the balance of the trip. I used a Canon 100mm macro lens which I really enjoy. I worked a lot on exposure and lighting, and now that I've had a chance to really study the photos I took during that trip I have identified some things I want to work on in the future. The next step I want to take is probably the most difficult: trying to go from taking "nice" pictures to taking stunning, eye-catching photos. Wish me luck!
(See the entire photo set on Flickr.)
We boarded a TACA red-eye flight out of SFO and arrived at the resort in time for lunch the next day. Although the timing of the flight was not ideal, it gave us plenty of time to do two dives that afternoon, and thoroughly get into "vacation mode." I did a total of 26 dives that week and carried my camera with me on most of them in an effort to get in some good photography practice.
In addition to the standard Caribbean critters (puffers, eels, damselfish, angelfish, etc.) I saw a small school of squid, a jawfish holding eggs in his mouth, way too many invasive lionfish, and a large nurse shark. Out of the 70 dives I've done around Roatan, this was the first shark I have seen there (with the exception of the time we went on a shark feeding dives). Contrast that to Cocos Island, where we saw multiple sharks - often scores - on every single dive. Sadly, the lack of sharks and other large fish is typical for the Caribbean, where they have been all but fished out.
All in all it was a good week with good diving spent with good people.
Photography notes: I took my 15mm fisheye lens down on a few dives, and then shot macro for the balance of the trip. I used a Canon 100mm macro lens which I really enjoy. I worked a lot on exposure and lighting, and now that I've had a chance to really study the photos I took during that trip I have identified some things I want to work on in the future. The next step I want to take is probably the most difficult: trying to go from taking "nice" pictures to taking stunning, eye-catching photos. Wish me luck!
(See the entire photo set on Flickr.)