Author: Ashley Armstrong
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Photo of the Week: Black Sea Nettle Jellyfish on the USS Hogan Wreck
Regular readers are by now aware of my obsession with the black sea nettle jellyfish. I worked a dive charter a few weeks ago and spotted my first black sea nettle of the summer from the confines of the boat. It was all over–from that moment on, I lived and breathed black sea nettles. (Seriously:…
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Macro Mania
I love shooting wide angle. When the water is clear, there is nothing more gratifying than that fisheye lens and dome port. Wrecks. Kelp forests. Big animals. Coral reefs. And people. Wide angle means context, and people love context. People identify with the scene. They like seeing themselves, or people like themselves, in the frame.…
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Throwback Thursday: Technical Wreck Training and USS Palawan
Wreck diving is the ultimate in underwater exploration. I’m ashamed to admit that I wasn’t into wrecks, at first. I didn’t see the point. They weren’t as pretty as real reefs, and it’s not like I was going to go inside a wreck, like, ever. And then I got some tech diving training, and it…
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Dreamy Nudibranch
The kelp forest can be a pretty dreamy place. The light coming through the kelp canopy has an ethereal beauty, and the gentle sway of the kelp stalks in light surge could rock you to sleep. I wanted to capture that surreal, unearthly quality in this week’s nudibranch photos.
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Photo of the Week: A Wolf Eel on the USS Hogan Wreck
The USS Hogan wreck is pretty much the perfect San Diego dive site–the conditions are usually excellent, the sea life is abundant, and the depth and distance from port are such that the site has an air of exclusivity to it. It’s also so rife with wolf eels that it almost–note I said almost–renders them…
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The Purple-Striped Jellyfish/Sea Nettle (Chrysaora colorata)
There were ripping currents on the deep wrecks this past weekend, and with the currents came a whole slew of jellyfish and tunicates. I’m mildly obsessive about the Black Sea Nettle bloom we sometimes get in San Diego in the summers, and I’m well-known as a nudibranch zealot, so it should come as no surprise…
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Back to the Fuchsia
Everything came together. I navigated through crappy visibility. I clambered around in surge that felt like the spin cycle. I stared at rocks until my vision focused on tiny fuchsia Spanish Shawls, my favorite nudibranch. I shed the responsibility of someone else’s good time, and all I had was my own.
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Throwback Thursday: Dead Dolphins and Live Whale Sharks
It was with a smug superiority that I returned to vacation: living it up while climbing ruins, rafting rivers, and stalking whale sharks was the name of the game. To summarize: The Belizean landscape was raw and rife with exotic wildlife. The Mayan ruins were breathtaking and fabulous. The whale sharks were one of the…
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Photo of the Week: The Hitchhiker
If I’d had the ocular fortitude to spot the microscopic amphipod hitchhiking a ride on this nudibranch’s back, I would have spent all damn day shooting those two little guys. However, I never even saw it until I was home, my gear was rinsed and drying, and I was on the computer, heavily cropping this…
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Cartoonize Your Photos with Topaz Clean
You’re not going to be using Topaz Clean on all of your photos. It’s not going to be one of your workhorse apps that becomes an essential part of your workflow, like Topaz Detail is. But if you want to do something different, and spice up your photos with a cool, cartoony, vector-art-type effect, you…