Dolphins and tigers and bears - oh my!

[Bruce_Yates]

I just posted two galleries with photos from recent nature trips. (Apologies that neither trip involved motorcycles.)

1. The first trip was to Brooks Lodge in Katmai National Park in Alaska in early July to see and photograph big brown bears (same species as N. American grizzlies, but roughly twice as big!) feeding on sockeye salmon on the Brooks River. It was a great trip, booked through www.Travelwild.com (http://www.travelwild.com/) (associated with www.photosafaris.com (http://www.photosafaris.com/) ) - the same company we used last year for our Spitsbergen polar bear trip.*

Photos from this Katmai brown bear trip, with my commentary captions, are at: http://www.underwaterreflections.com/galle...069/1/175666882 (http://www.underwaterreflections.com/gallery/3189069/1/175666882)

* The gallery for last year's polar bear trip is at http://www.underwaterreflections.com/gallery/1686195

Here's my best shot from that trip:
http://seattleyates.smugmug.com/photos/175666882-M-3.jpg

2. The second trip was shark and dolphin diving in the Bahamas a few weeks ago. That trip included several days diving with sharks (Caribbean Reef Sharks, Lemon Sharks, and Tiger Sharks), and then two days snorkeling and free-diving (breath-hold diving) with wild dolphins. We were fortunate to encounter and swim with both bottlenose and spotted dolphins, and I got a few shots of each. I've posted a gallery of photos from that trip on my old website: http://seattleyates.com/UW%20Photos.htm
(Note: the last shot in that gallery is of me...looking like Aquaman!) :D

Here are a few shots from that trip:

Bottlenose dolphins
http://www.underwaterreflections.com/photos/180859343-M-3.jpg

Tiger shark (approx. 14 ft long, 2000+lbs)
http://www.underwaterreflections.com/photos/180858709-M-3.jpg

And the one that seems to be everyone's favorite - a lemon shark on the surface at sunset
http://seattleyates.com/2007-07-26__3902__15mm__eos-1d_std.jpg

[slowflyn]

Yep, the lemon shark wins. You do great work with a camera. Thanks for sharing.

[kdog]

Well, somebody has been having entirely too much fun lately. :p

Looks like a couple of fantastic photo safaris there, Bruce. Great pictures. I spent too much time looking at the bear pics, and now need to peruse the shark gallery when I get more time. You really captured the bear's action and behavior well, which makes the presentation fascinating. I enjoyed your informative commentaries as well. I also appreciated the EXIF information on the shots. I probably spent almost as much time scrutinizing those as the actual photos themselves. That gives us armchair photogs a real sense of the shooting conditions.

So how did you get those fantastic shark closeups anyway? Cage?

Cheers,
-joel

[Bruce_Yates]

Well, somebody has been having entirely too much fun lately. :p

Looks like a couple of fantastic photo safaris there, Bruce. Great pictures. I spent too much time looking at the bear pics, and now need to peruse the shark gallery when I get more time. You really captured the bear's action and behavior well, which makes the presentation fascinating. I enjoyed your informative commentaries as well. I also appreciated the EXIF information on the shots. I probably spent almost as much time scrutinizing those as the actual photos themselves. That gives us armchair photogs a real sense of the shooting conditions.

So how did you get those fantastic shark closeups anyway? Cage?

Cheers,
-joel


No cages for these sharks, Joel - just lots of careful education on how to treat different sharks (mainly the tigers - they're truly the apex predator there, so you need to keep your head on a swivel and be very alert to where they are...especially when there are 4 or 5 in sight!). The first time a 12-14ft tiger shark "bumps" your camera (like many sharks, they tend to bump things to "investigate" before they bite) is a bit nerve-racking, but after it happens a few times, you get more comfortable around them, and just try to make sure they don't sneak up on you from behind. They have NEVER had any kind of accident/injury...at least none where any evidence was left behind. :histerica

Attached are some photos other people took that will help illustrate all this. First is me standing with my camera looking like Aquaman. Next is an "action" shot of me dodging a tiger shark (I don't look quite so tough in that one). And also one just showing us standing around with just lemon sharks (no tigers).

The shark shots on the surface were not taken while underwater. Rather, they were taken as part of an activity we called "Lemon Snaps" - where you sit on the swimstep and dangle your camera (in its underwater housing) in the water while crew members dangle pieces of dead, rotting, disgusting fish in the water right in front of your camera, and as some of the 20-30 lemon sharks come in to try to chomp the bait, you try to snap their photo! Several people suffered gouges in their dome ports during this activity, and apparently people on previous trips have even ended up with shark teeth stuck in their dome ports (puncturing them, and immediately ruining $500-$2,000 worth of equipment)! http://www.digitaldiver.net/yabbse/YaBBImages/shocked.gif The things we go through for photos, eh? http://www.digitaldiver.net/yabbse/YaBBImages/wink.gif

Also attached to this post are two shots that help show "Lemon Snaps" - they're taken by boat-owner Jim Abernethy using his personally developed "Sky Cam." One shows people on the swimstep shooting Lemon Snaps. The other shows 20-30 lemon sharks swarming around the swimstep trying to participate in Lemon Snaps! http://www.digitaldiver.net/yabbse/YaBBImages/grin.gif

As for the bear stuff, thanks for taking time to read all the crap I wrote, Joel. When you spend lots of time, it's nice when people find it interesting enough to read!! :) As you can tell from the EXIF info, I was using long lenses (and often teleconverters), and tried to keep shutter speeds high enough to freeze movement. I am generally willing to sacrifice aperture/depth of field for shutter speed, but since lenses (even good ones) tend to be sharper at f/8 or higher, that's a constant trade-off. Even with a tripod, the platforms were constantly vibrating from people walking around, though, so with those long lenses, I felt I really needed the faster shutter speeds... Interestingly enough, there were several people there with 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses combined with 2X TC, rather than using a bigger zoom (e.g., 100-400). Like me, they considered the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 one of the best lenses made (the new f/4 is also getting rave reviews).

[kdog]

So basically what we have here is a guy with a boat, who's trolling for sharks, and using photographers as bait. :eek:

So, thanks for "the rest of the story". Truly amazing. You guys have guts. I can't believe how close you got to that one Tiger shark. It paid off, these shots are amazing.

Regarding the bears. I was actually surprised how low a shutterspeed you used in many cases. I'm talking speeds around the 1/200 and 1/300 range. And the shots still came out great. There wasn't an abundance of light there evidently.

Cheers,
-joel

[Dick]

Bruce - your e-mail, that tracks with this post, came in to the upstairs PC just as I wuz fixing to do some maintenance. So, I forwarded it to Cheryl at the downstairs laptop. All I heard for the next hour and a half wuz: "oh, my gawd"; "you gotta come down and look at this"; "oh, my gawd"; "can you believe this?"; "awesome"; "are you comin' down?".

{She just this moment asked me, on the intercom, if I had thanked you yet for the e-mail and to tell you she'd be a reference if you ever wanna go to work for N'atl Geographic!!!} :D Never seen that lady git into sumpthin' with that much gusto and intense interest! :)

I guess I should mention the shark gallery to her; now that she's been with the bears!!! :eek:

I haven't been to the linked sites yet, so I'm looking forward to doing that this evening, and watching on the beeg screen PC with Cheryl (even tho she's btdt oncet, on the mini-laptop!!). Sure do appreciate you sharing your photo experiences and gallery of albums with everyone - you're gonna be sorely missed at CCR this year, with your photo seminar that has been such a big hit during last several CCRs.

Best Regards.

[Bruce_Yates]

...Regarding the bears. I was actually surprised how low a shutterspeed you used in many cases. I'm talking speeds around the 1/200 and 1/300 range. And the shots still came out great. There wasn't an abundance of light there evidently.

Those shutter speeds were only possible because I was using a tripod; otherwise, they would have had to be much faster to avoid blurring with those long lenses. And what you're not seeing are the hundreds of photos that weren't as clear. One of the nice things about using a camera that shoots 8.5 frames a second is that you can shoot a lot of photos of each subject, and sometimes a few of them come out clear, even if most don't! ;)

[Bruce_Yates]

...So, I forwarded it to Cheryl at the downstairs laptop. All I heard for the next hour and a half wuz: "oh, my gawd"; "you gotta come down and look at this"; "oh, my gawd"; "can you believe this?"; "awesome"; "are you comin' down?"
. . . you're gonna be sorely missed at CCR this year, with your photo seminar that has been such a big hit during last several CCRs.


:o :o Tell Cheryl I'm really glad she liked the photos, Dick, but you're embarrasing me!

No one will miss my being at CCR more than me! I'm really bummed that this will be the first CCR I'm missing since I got my LT six years ago. :(

[jayz9705]

- you're gonna be sorely missed at CCR this year, with your photo seminar that has been such a big hit during last several CCRs.

Best Regards.




And a hearty AMEN to that, Brother Dick!

I will quickly add, your personnality will be missed the most!