The Cook Islands - December 2007

This was the first time I have been on a vacation with what I would consider to be a full photography kit. Although I was in the Cooks for my wedding and honeymoon, I really wanted to try some macro wildlife shots and some underwater photography. The following are my favourites in these categories.

This shot (and the one below) were both taken using a 55mm manual focus macro lens. I was positioned about 6 inches away from the subject in both cases, which meant I had to remain perfectly still for a long time so that the hermits would feel comfortable emerging from their shell. In the shot above, I had seen the shell move on the sand from about 20 feet away, but as soon as I got near the hermit had shrunk away. After 20 minutes of waiting with my camera positioned he popped out and I was absolutely stunned by the colours he wore.

In contrast, this much bigger hermit could not fit in his shell. You can see from the above photograph that he is covering his eyes with his front claws in an attempt to protect himself. When he emerged from hiding he already knew I was there and started beating a hasty retreat away from me!

I was expecting this 'Hermit Session' to be a real test of my patience, but in reality I managed to catch 20 great shots within an hour. I was very pleased with the results.

The next task for me was to capture some underwater pictures. This brought it's own hurdles as I do not own an underwater housing for my SLR. So instead I bought a point-and-shoot with an underwater housing. Due to the limited flash I knew that I would be restricted to snorkelling in order to take advantage of the sun. I had not realised how much light fall-off there would be just within a few metres of the surface. This can be seen in the first 2 shots where photoshop was needed to restore the colours - also causing some pixelation (or oversharpening) of the image.

Eventually I managed to find a very tame puffer, that measured about a foot long, who was very happy to swim up to my outstretched hand and take pieces of banana from me. This enabled me to stay at the surface and have the subject come to me. The difference in the picture quality (both colour and sharpening) was quite surprising to me.

Of course, I also wanted to get some photographs that captured the stunning scenery and landscape. I was a little dissapointed that we didn't get some of the stunning sunsets that I had seen others capture, but I did manage to get a great shot from the plane and the obligatory "Lilt- style" shot.

The final 'fave shot' is one I took of a young palm. It caught my eye because it made a heart-shape with its branches. Well, I was there to get married! It seemed too perfect a shot to pass up. When I got home and started to edit the shot I was really struck by the colours - they were not tweaked in the post-processing. I did add the circumference blur to make a dreamy feel to the shot. I am still not sure whether I accomplished this or not.

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