close your eyes and hope for the best

Old House, Kitchen (click image to enlarge)

…the saddest thing of all was a “Do Not Resuscitate” notice taped to the refrigerator door.

The new owner had hired me to photograph the old house. It was to be completely renovated. The images were for archival purposes and would be used as a reference for the renovations.

I wanted to capture the feeling of the house. I didn’t know much of its history but the little I did know certainly contributed to its forlorn atmosphere.

The house was built around 1902. Despite its rundown state it was still solid. Perhaps the anti-mold qualities of the old growth douglas fir wood with which it was built, had prevented rot from setting in.

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Black-tipped Reef Shark. Long Island Bahamas. (click image to enlarge)

We fear the unknown and bring down cages where we become the caged animal. Over time we have learned that there is little to fear. We really don’t need those cages.

The Ankle Biter
Sometimes, if we had dived one location too many times in a row, towards the end of a dive the sharks would become satiated or uninterested in the bait bucket. I remember one dive in particular when the cinematographers, John and Adam, had dumped some of the chopped up fish on the reef to get the sharks to come in closer. After a short time John and Adam moved a few feet away to get a slightly different shot.

I had already finished my roll or two of film. Armed with my trusty stainless steel pole I was keeping an eye on the action while floating a few inches above the coral. For some unknown reason one of the smaller sharks kept swimming aggressively towards my ankles. It was very persistent.

John’s words rang through my mind, “If a shark is giving you trouble you just give it a good stiff poke with that steel rod”. (See part I).
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Black-tipped Reef Shark. Long Island Bahamas. (click image to enlarge)

One by one, a parade of Atlantic Black-tipped Reef Sharks glided by. They were elegant. Perfect in every way.

It was a dream job. I was an underwater stills photographer on a made for television underwater documentary series. The primary function of my job was to photograph the crew while they were filming wildlife, or shipwrecks, or whatever else they happened to be shooting. We spent months at a time on locations in Florida, various locales in the Caribbean and throughout the Great Lakes. My first shark dive is one of those life moments that remain crystal clear in memory.

When filming or photographing sharks in the wild, most of the time the sharks are baited in. For most species of sharks the divers do not require shark cages but rather stay in the open, preferably very close to the bait.

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Southern Elephant Seals, Falkland Islands. (click image to enlarge)

It turns out that four or five tons of undulating blubber on sand doesn’t make much noise. I don’t know what got my attention but I looked up to find a freight train of flab and testosterone rolling down on me.

Southern Elephant seals are stupendously large (up to 5 tons for males) immensely fat and when they are molting and lying about in their wallows, seriously smelly. They are marine mammals built for a submarine existence and not surprisingly, are quite ungainly on land. What else would you expect? How would you do on the beach without any arms or legs? Similar I would think: a big flop with the ladies. They have faces that only another elephant seal could love and January in The Falkland Islands is the season of love.

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Rock Hopper Penguins, Falkland Islands. (click image to enlarge)

For a wildlife photographer it is paradise. It is the opportunity you have dreamed about. It is an undiscovered Galapagos.

Sitting at the edge of a Rockhopper penguin colony is a magical experience. Rockhoppers are the cutest penguins on the planet. It is wonderful to watch them wend their way to and from the sea on penguin highways that wind through the tussoc grass and then up and down rugged shores and unbelievably steep rock. I spied the above three Rockhoppers spying me spying them spy me… through the tussoc. I crouched even lower and shot through the grass. When I say, “shot through the grass” I’m talking about a lot of grass. I was shooting wide open with a 180mm lens. Using a short tele’ wide open throws almost all of the grass completely out of focus. The grass close to the lens actually disappears in the final image giving a soft focus effect. This technique draws the viewer right into the Rockhopper’s world. While it is possible to shoot through grass or leaves you need to make sure that nothing is in front of the focal animal’s eye(s). That isn’t as easy as it sounds as the grass can be so far out of focus that you can’t see it through the viewfinder.

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