common dolphins week #6
Common dolphins travelling in the group, Wild Coast, South Africa
Nikon D300 + Nikkor 10.5mm, Pro One Dome port, strobes Sea&Sea YS-250 x 2
this image was extended on the right to give more "space" to the subjects, cropped about 5% on left and bottom, some garbage was removed in Photoshop, contrast and color correction in Lightroom
Location on Google Maps
Wikipedia reference
During this season I was diving once again with fisheye lens - I got a lot of pictures of pretty much everything in the bait balls during last two seasons - one ultimate thing which is still missing - underwater shot of the Bryde's whale - and this is why I sacrifice possibility of taking close-ups of small animals like gannets in a favor of having chance to get really cool image of sardine feeding giant. Alas, this season I was not lucky again - I got good pics of Bryde's whale from the surface, but no underwater encounters - this year was slow, as I mentioned already. Anyway, fingers crossed for the next year - sooner or later I will get what I want ;) !
Sometimes for people not familiar with fisheye lens features it's difficult to comprehend actual scale and proximity of animal action captured on underwater photos. In this particular case top dolphin was less than half meter away from me - and common dolphins are big - they grow up to 2.5 meters. So imagine yourself this small pod of massive ~2m long animals charging at you at speed of about 40 km/h and passing just few centimeters away from your head. Dolphins are quite good in high-speed navigation, but sometimes they do bump into divers, which is quite painful, and I heard even about at least one lethal clash during bait ball action. As friendly and intelligent these mammals appear one still need to exercise some caution while diving with them in hunting mode.
I was very pleased and happy to see that during last few weeks international media space was rocked by two big photo-explosions detonated by two great Russian underwater photographers. Alexander shilovpope Semenov whom rocked Behance Network few months ago with his set of White Sea macro-creatures now achieved breakthrough publications in multiple online and traditional media - look for example at this Daily Mail feature - and this is just one of many hits he got during last few days ! And few weeks ago, while I was in South Africa, Viktor samebody Lyagushkin and his brave model created mind-blowing set of images with beluga whales - check this material, again in Daily Mail, which is again just single publication of many. Great job guys ! It is very cool that stagnant, political scene of Russian u/w photography consisting mostly of copy-cat activity and farts of self-importance (check for instance infamous Diveplanet, such a shit hole - among other things they refuse to remove my copyrighted content !) is now shaken by genuine talent and creativity. I'm especially happy that international success was achieved by people whom are taking images of Russian oceans - which certainly deserve more publicity. Congratulations again - great job and great example for all of us !