common dolphins week #3
Common dolphins charging bait ball, Wild Coast, South Africa
Nikon D300 + Nikkor 10.5mm, Pro One Dome port, strobes Sea&Sea YS-250 x 2
this image is 5% cropped from top and left, very slight contrast and color correction in Adobe Lightroom
Location on Google Maps
Wikipedia reference
One concept comes to my mind when I try to describe encounters with hunting dolphins - "Harmony in motion". Best thing for photographer is to relax and enjoy zen like state during dive in dolphin bait ball - nature itself will present countless perfectly composed situations which will look great on the pictures. All that remains is to make sure exposure and strobe lights are setup properly - and just to enjoy this wonderful underwater meditation afterwards. Sometimes it brings great results like this one, which is indeed my all time favorite image of hunting dolphin.
This year I was lucky to play in the same bait ball with namgul, great photographer and great diving buddy. In situations like this it's natural for us to end up with shots featuring us together with animals - like this one picture Dima took with me and common dolphin (and rather stupid yellow snorkel, OMG, forgot to detach it !). Isn't it a great memory of the fantastic moment ? I think so ! I also managed to capture Dima in the bait ball together with dolphin - but my image is by far more inferior this time...
And finally in this blog's spirit of bashing ugliness, stupidity and self-promotion - I could not pass past this rather comical piece. I was laughing so hard that I even wasted some of my precious time on creating demotivator image for this dumbest situation. Actually it is "Dumb Dumber" - dumber one is taking image of wave while dumb one is taking images of dumber taking image of wave ! Problem - nobody runs, these people are seriously brave ! Question now of course is what kind of aquatic stunts and heroism awaits us during this fabulous expedition ? I don't know how about you, but I'm already filled with excitement and can't wait for it ! Magic odyssey of dumbest photo-blogger in LiveJournal continues - so - Stay tuned !
