So lets hear YOUR stories about what you saw on shakedown, or gear-testing, or other dives where you didn't take YOUR camera?
What's a camera?
I used to take photography semi-seriously as a hobby and spent so much time viewing the world through a lens that I was "capturing" everything and "seeing" nothing. Being somewhere or seeing something became a constant mental exercise in how to "get it on film" and I was failing to experience it.
This realisation hit me full force on my second time to the Taj Mahal. The first time I saw it through the lens and got some good pictures (if I do say so myself). The second time, 6 months later, it was overcast so I left the camera in the bag and while standing in front if it, its context and unadulterated perfection were so astonishing (when not looking through the camera) that it literally moved me to tears. To think that they made this perfect PERFECT thing--by hand, no less--in a country which had lost any ability to do anything perfectly and was purely and singularly busy trying to drag itself into the 20th century..... There....amidst the biggest mass of human chaos I had ever seen was one of the few buildings ever built that is as much a fully blown work of art as anything functional.
That experience pretty much ended my semi-serious obsession with photography. I realized that the camera was separating me from the world around me.... the exact opposite of the reason why I started with it to begin with. My pendulum swung to the other end and now I'm all about "being there". I still take the camera on vacation because my wife makes me but underwater..... I'm more than happy to let other people do that.
So, Lynne, the lesson is this. When you saw the manta you missed a great opportunity to "be there" because you were ruffled by not having the camera with you.
Just a thought.
R..