drbill:
I filmed much of my "Playful Pinnipeds: California Sea Lions" DVD there since encounters with them here are much rarer and vis often limits the ability to get good footage.
Speaking of which, I'm beginning to question the veracity of my friend Ken. The vis in those shots just looks too good to be southern California! Fess up, Ken. Wish ours here was that good.
Uncharacteristically great viz or photoshop?
You make the call...
(it was a little of both. Great conditions, shallow water, mid day, etc, etc, etc..)
It could just be the photographer consistently moving away from the silt, setting up and waiting for the herd to find him. Snapping two or three quick shots, then moving again and repeating the step, moving progressivly closer to the surface to eacape the growing cloud and secure better lighting - as he was shooting with only one strobe on a short arm...
Or hovering motionless over the sand and moving to the outside of the gurgling herd so I could isolate silly and curious singles and possibly get good shots of just one or two at a time before the sand blew up again.
Its almost like I shot 67 shots in about 35 minutes just to grab 7 or 8 keepers, then came home and spent another two or three hours culling through the likely subjects (all told, 210 shots from that dive day), then another 10 to 180 minutes per shot picking out hundreds of grains of sand and other detritus in the water, color correcting, white balancing, contrasting, highlighting, filtering and sharpening every single shot individually at 250% life size until my eyes are about to fall out of my skull. That pixel by pixel detail work is why I make available my full size images in the SoCal dive reports.
But that's making it sound like I had a plan. That makes it sound like these weren't just lucky shots. Everybody knows I'm not that smart.
:10:
You may question my veracity, you may never question my tenacity.
---
Ken
