Solutions - Tom Kline on Photographing Salmon in Alaska

I had a phone conversation with photographer Tom Kline recently. He lives in Alaska and does very interesting research and documentary photography with marine life of the region. We had been chatting about a polecam system he was using to photograph herring at night from a boat, which made me think of other photo-ops he might encounter that might be particularly challenging. Like, photographing salmon in local streams, for example.

Aside from the obvious challenge of not wanting to be where a grizzly bear might be working the same salmon, Tom said the biggest problem is light. He said the days are very short in Alaska in the particular season when the salmon are running. The issue is further complicated by the mountainous terrain. The sun drops behind the ridges very early in the day, and even when it is "piercing" the canyons, it is like dusk in the Caribbean. So, Tom decided he needed to take his daylight with him.

To that end, his salmon-shooter involved building an aluminum "sled" that would hold his Seacam housing and Nikon D2X solidly on the stream bed. Then a set of rails held one Inon strobe (chosen for their small weight and easy maneuverability ... a huge issue when schlepping the system back into the woods) hard wired to the housing. That strobe pointed not towards the water, but up to an array of 5 other Inon strobe heads. In Tom's words "There are 5 strobes being slaved - two on the L and R ends, one in the middle, and two on the lollipop" Each of these four strobes are set to slave mode, and would fire when the hard-wired strobe went off. It is these 5 strobes that aim back towards the stream, in front of the lens, at the point where the salmon are meant to swim. At that point, Tom takes a long remote cord, sits on the bank of the river, and fires the camera once the salmon swim into view.

Very clever solution to a unique photographic challenge.

Now for Something Entirely Different - Alaska

I know this is a bit early to get excited for a trip that is not scheduled until summer 2011, but we did a trip to British Columbia and Alaska several years ago aboard the Nautilus Explorer, and that still remains vivid in my mind as one of my all time favorite live-aboard adventures.

For that one, please see:
http://www.stephenfrink.com/sf-reports/200407alaska/

The summer cruising season to this region is very short, and 2010 and all the rest of 2011 is sold out for the Nautilus Explorer. However, we were fortunate enough to have them hold a charter for us in the very heart of the best-of-the-best time to be there. This time it is a special itinerary to Alaska only. See the letter below from Captain Mike Lever of Nautilus Explorer to know what to expect:

"Our Alaska journeys have continued to evolve and get better and better since you were last onboard. The diving, scenery and experiences up here were always spectacular but with each passing season, we are getting more and more dialed in, discovering more "kick-ass" dive sites, obtaining additional permits and fine tuning the very best places to see the big critters -- humpback whales, sealions, sea otter, grizzly bears, giant pacific octopus and wolfeels. We now have one site with 10 wolfeels and can practically guarantee octopus sightings for example!

Sample Itinerary: Departure Date: Wed Jul 6, 2011. The ship will be available for boarding in Juneau at 6:00 pm. The ship is scheduled to sail at 8:00 pm. Disembarking in Ketchikan on Sat Jul 16, 2011 at 9:00 am.

Day 1: Dinner-time board in Juneau. Evening steam and anchor before midnight.

Day 2-4: Wake up at Point Adolphus at the entrance to Glacier Bay for the best humpback whale viewing in southeast Alaska plus eagles and stellar sealions. 3 hour sail to Indian Island at the entrance to Icy Strait where we will anchor for the next 3 days. Excellent invertebrate diving plus stellar sealions on every dive with vis usually 20 - 30 feet. Zodiac tours and kayaking with fantastic photo op's up close with humpback whales, sealions, sea otters, bald eagles, etc. Finish off with an evening visit to the tiny boardwalk community of Elfin Cove.

Day 5: Wake up at Baranoff Warm Springs. 2 great dives with loads of scallops, anemones and kelp plus a visit to the hot-springs.

Day 6: Patterson Point. Reliable octopus sightings. Breathtaking scenery at anchor in a steep sided fjord. This is the most beautiful inlet we have ever seen and we have seen grizzly bears on every visit here.

Day 7 - 8: Port Alexander/Wooden Island. Great place for zodiac tours and kayaking and shore visit to Port Alexander not to mention varied and excellent diving - both invertebrate and critters including 10 wolf eels around a single rock.

Day 9: Le Conte glacier. Iceberg day!!

Day 10: Prince of Wales Island. Steep wall diving, 10,000 swimming
scallops, varied diving, early evening arrival Ketchikan.

Day 11: morning disembark”

I know what some of you may be thinking ... I don't do cold water. I had that thought the first time to British Columbia and Alaska as well, but with modern drysuits the cold is not an issue, and truthfully, I have never seen greater density and diversity of life underwater than beneath these Emerald Seas. Plus, for the most part, things don't move quickly and the photo opportunities are extraordinarily productive. Yet, for all of that, the best of this trip happens above the water. Seeing glaciers calf, watching eagles and grizzly bears and stellar sealions, trying our hand at over/unders with salmon, relaxing in a natural hotspring, and photographing humpback whales are pure phototgrapic inspiration!

My wife Barbara and daughter Alexa were aboard for the last trip and they didn't even go diving. Still, they found this was one of our best family vacations ever. In fact, Barbara just came in and looked over my shoulder as I was looking at photos from the last trip, and she confirmed, emphatically, that she wouldn't be diving this time either! Oh well, her loss, because for sure I'll be diving. You can dress for cold, but you can't experience the magic below without jumping into it.

Even though 2011 is a long way away, this is a very special trip, and I appreciate the cooperation and consideration our friends at Nautilus Explorer have extended in giving us this absolutely perfect seasonal opportunity to visit Alaska.

As with all my dive travel and photo courses, please see WaterHouse Tours, http://www.waterhousetours.com for more information.,

Pix from the Road - Ambon to Raja Ampat

I just got home from a great trip to Indonesia, beginning in Ambon and cruising to Raja Ampat on the Seven Seas. Terrific boat and crew, and big shout-out to Stew Esposito, cruise director on board, for going the extra mile at every step along charter but especially shepherding our bags on board the ExpressAir flight out of Sorong.

Nothing worse than getting home without your bags. Well, plenty things are worse than that, but still, something to be avoided whenever possible. Especially in my case this time, as my Seacam 1DsMKIII housing was booked to leave the day after I got home to go to the Bahamas to shoot super-models for the Victoria's Secret swimsuit campaign. I wasn't invited, mind you, but my housing got to go on rental to shoot over/unders and such with pro fashion shooter Russell James. No doubt my housing will have good stories to tell when he comes home ;)

The trip had very nice diversity, with good wide angle potential in the Banda Sea (although there were plenty of critter options there too) and the wealth of creatures and soft coral backgrounds that make fish and macro photography so interesting in Raja Ampat.

I'll get around to writing a proper article about the trip one day soon, but for now here's a brief glimpse of the kinds of photo-ops we encountered on our 12 days at sea.

Seaflash 150 on location in Indonesia

One of my guests on our Indonesia cruise recently had a Seacam Seaflash 150 onboard. Actually, it was the first one I'd seen in the field because we are still delivering our backorders and I put my personal strobe at the back of the line. But, he did let me take it on one dive, so here is what I shot as a test with it hooked up to my Canon 1DsMKIII and S6 connector:

1. Here is what the strobe looks like, shot taken on Seven Seas live-aboard, see Photo 1.

2. Quick analysis of performance (based on that one dive only): Very accurate TTL performance, once the strobe is fully recycled. Harald Hordosch of Seacam wrote to advise me that the normal expectation is 2 - 2.5 seconds after even a full dump.

File number reflects the F-stop used, in half-stop increments from F-8 through F-32. Same distance & same shutter speed (1/250th), only change is aperture and all shot with strobe on TTL and camera on manual. Only reason I chose 1/250th was to eliminate any exposure variability from ambient light. Obviously, it will work at any synch speed, from the fastest allowable per camera to any slower shutter speed.

Any one of the exposures would be fine, especially when processed from RAW. This is over a five stop range! Pretty amazing really, especially when you consider these are thumbnails from the RAW, screengrabs from Photo Mechanic with absolutely no levels adjustments. See photo 2.

Note - Since I first posted this morning I heard from the electronics guru that designs the Seacam strobe and they prefer a slower shutter speed be used. 1/250th can of course work, but more consistent TTL is apparently achieved with a slower shutter speed.


BTW ... when shot on manual power settings, like you might with wide angle, the recycle is quick and dependent on strobe power setting (as you would expect).

As reference, this topside series shot on the camera table is what it looks like shooting normal brackets on manual. See photo 3.

I haven't been such a strong proponent of TTL with digital over the years, but once I tried this strobe and had it in the back of my mind that I could pretty well figure on getting an accurate exposure the first time, I began to notice all the skittish critters I missed while shooting manual exposures in Raja Ampat because I never got a second shot. They bolted and I did not have time to adjust my aperture or strobe power setting. Something obviously to be said for strobe exposure automation, when it works properly, as this appears to.

I'm sure most reading realize I am a Seacam distributor, but I am happy to report on the technology advances of any manufacture. Please consider this a simple head's-up on a functional new tool.

Wet diopter

I just came home from 12 days in Indonesia, Ambon to Raja Ampat. One nice thing about having so much luxury of time aboard the boat is that I was able to do some testing and experimenting, something never possible on a commercial shoot that has to get knocked out in a couple of days on location.

Since there was so much macro life to shoot, I was particularly interested in the external wet diopter. I shoot Seacam, so my diopter was the Seacam Wet Two, but there were a couple of Woody's diopters onboard being used on Subal systems, and I found my observations below are generally indicative of their product as well:

1. The magnification difference between no diopter and the Wet Two is significant. To test accurately I shot my 100 macro lens on a Canon 1DsMKIII (full frame) and manually dialed the lens out to minimum focus. The wider shots of the little sea apple and nudibranchs shown here represent full 1:1, lens racked out all the way and then camera moved forward until accurate focus achieved. Then I added the Wet Two (that's the beauty of these close-up lenses, they can be added and removed while underwater) and then moved closer until focus popped. You can see the relative enlargement they actually do provide. Quite impressive really.

2. The position of the front of the lens relative to the rear of the flat port glass is a massive variable. i tried to simulate this topside with shots of my watch face. You'll see the first shot is 1:1, minimum focus no diopter. The second shot is minimum focus with Wet Two and lens right up next to the rear of the macro port glass. The third shot, the one with all the smearing and optical aberrations at the edges, is with the lens maybe 2 inches from the rear of the glass.

It is important to note that macro lenses can be fairly casual about how they fit behind a flat port. They just have to not vignette and they'll work. But, to properly use a wet diopter, the front of the macro lens must be very, very close to the back of the glass on the macro port. Of course, this is easier with an internally focusing lens constantly at one point. But even with an extending lens, like the old style 60mm and 105mm micro Nikkors, the macro port extensions need to be designed so that the maximum lens extension (coincidentally, minimum focus) falls in proximity to the port glass if effective use of wet diopter is a goal.

Shooter mask

A diver's facemask is their window on the underwater world, but for a photographer it is even more important. If you can't see it you can't shoot it. To that end, there are a number of things I look for in a favorite shooter mask:

1. Black silicone skirt - this is the most important thing for me, and is the first parameter I consider. Silicone because it is more comfortable than the old rubber masks of yesteryear, but black for the same reason Ansel Adams put a black focusing cloth over his head when working with his view camera outside in Yosemite. There is a need to block extraneous light from the groundglass to optimize contrast and resolution, and black does so obviously far better than a clear skirted mask. I like clear skirted masks for my models, because they are more attractive and easier to light, but for me, with my eye to a viewfinder on a housed D-SLR, black always.

2. High light-transmission glass - Some glass has higher miscellaneous mineral content than others and it can affect light transmission. In fact, when I first got my Atomic Ultra-clear I shot a photo through that mask and my old shooter mask as a comparison, just to check out the meter readings with the only variable being type of glass in front of the camera lens. I could actually deduce a significant difference in the histogram of the two shots, with the curve moving more to the right with the Atomic mask, empirically proving greater light transmission with the Ultraclear glass. Better glass is brighter glass, and if more light passes through the mask, my underwater visual acuity is enhanced.

3. Gauge reader - I wear reading glasses, but have perfect distance vision. So, I can pick out any of the big stuff on the reef, but am challenged by the little reef minutia, pygmy seahorses and such. But, the bigger issue was that I had a hard time reading all the digital menus and arcane pathways I had to navigate to change camera custom settings. But, now that I use a ground gauge reader applied to the lower left corner of my shooter mask, that issue is resolved. One is enough for me, and I had it installed in the lower left so it did not interfere with distance view, and did not affect my predominant right eye, the one I put to the viewfinder.

BTW ... I tried the easy way for years, the store-bought diopters that were meant to adhere to the mask lens. They continually fell off. Now I have it done properly, in a mask optic shop, and have asked for a customized line of sight, low enough to not obscure vision when looking forward, but optimally placed for reading detail in the lower portion of the pane.

4. Anti-fog - Even the best mask is horrible if you can't get it to clear. Which is a fairly massive problem with many masks these days. The release agent used to pop the skirts off the mold in manufacture seems to stay on there forever, sloughing off at the most inopportune times to make the mask continually fog. I've tried all the tricks ... softscrub, toothpaste, even using a lighter to burn the goop off the rubber and glass. But, the only thing that absolutely/positively works for me is "500 psi" mask scrub. It costs a buck and you can usually find it by the check out counter at you local dive store. Once the mask is adequately scrubbed, a good mask-clear works wonders. My favorite these days is the "Diver's Best" brand. But, rinse thoroughly before putting on for the dive, because some of the mask clear solutions can irritate the eye.

DAN to the Rescue (again)

DAN to the Rescue

It was the start of an 11-day trip, November 2008, on one of my photo tours, this time running from Ambon to Raja Ampat in the far reaches of Indonesia. Pretty remote regions, a fact I learned all too well Valentine’s Day of 2007 when the live-aboard dive boat we were on in the Misool region made a strategic error running at night and ran smack-dab into an island. The island won. The bowsprit on the wooden boat was pushed back into the mast, dislodging it and causing the base of the mast to smash through crew quarters. No one was hurt, amazingly really, but we arranged to be evacuated by Indonesian Search-and-Rescue to Sorong and then we flew back to Bali where we finished off our dive holiday.

It could have been a lot worse, but just being back in that part of the world left me feeling a little paranoid. So, when on the first day out a guest began to complain of possible cardiac symptoms after the very first dive, I began to consider where we were going, how primitive health care services were, all the things that could go wrong and how far we were from critical-care health services. We had a couple of doctors on board (also guests) and their collective concern made me decide to talk to the experts. From anywhere in the world, for any diving related emergency, my go-to guys are the Diver’s Alert Network.

The first thing I did was to pick up a sat phone and call DAN in Durham, North Carolina. It was two in the morning there, but the on-call physician Dan Nord (sorry to wake you Dan) talked to my guest, and then went the extra mile to seek out a cardiac consultation from his network of specialists. He called back in less than 20-minutes and we had reassurance that this was not a life-threatening cardiac event, and so long as he took it a little easy we could carry-on with the trip.

That particular event, albeit rather inconsequential, reminded me how very important the DAN organization has become for the growth of global dive travel. A fact I know all too well from personal experience.

Divers Alert Network has bailed me out of jams several times in the past. The first time I got bent was in Vanuatu, back when Vanuatu was REALLY remote. There were no chambers there, and at the time there wasn’t even a decompression chamber in Fiji, the next stop along the way. There weren’t satellite phones then either, but through a combination of single-sideband radios back to a shore base and a long distance phone call to DAN headquarters, they decided the nearest deco treatment was in Hawaii. So, I boarded on the 747 I was scheduled to fly anyway, and Qantas dropped an O2 bib just for me. I sucked oxygen, watched movies, and stepped off our jetliner in Waikiki to be whisked away to the Navy’s recompression chamber for an 8-hour treatment. That was the first time I really got a glimpse of the efficient global network that DAN had become, and how absolutely integral they are to the growth of international dive travel. For without the DAN safety net, people could not afford to go to the places we go for fear of being bankrupted by the very real possibility that something, dive-related or not, could go wrong and they’d have to be evacuated.

That episode alone cost DAN insurance providers over $50,000, and that was back in mid-eighties dollars. I can easily envision a $200,000 tab for evacuation and treatment these days, and without that kind of an upper limit on a personal credit card, there is the very real possibility the airplane and doctors and chambers would simply not be available if they weren’t certain they would be paid. That’s the power of deep pockets and serious insurance. That’s the power of DAN.

So, I knew DAN from my own experiences, but later in the week, over a few post-dive beers, other DAN stories popped up. One guest had her brakes give out on her bicycle as she was racing down a steep incline. She fell off the bike, smashed into a tree, and had massive facial injuries. DAN to the rescue in terms of prompt evacuation. Her husband, also a DAN member, suffered a heart attack while on a cruise ship in Jamaica. He got off the ship in Cayman and was stabilized in the local hospital and then airlifted home. DAN to the rescue. It was interesting to me to note how broad the coverage was in these cases, even though not directly dive related accidents. Insurance and assistance for evacuation back to proper health care facilities is a big part of the DAN mission.

As further illustration, another bad accident happened to a close friend of mine on one of our trips to Thailand. He got hit by the hull and propeller of the dive dinghy, resulting in some very nasty contusions and deep lacerations to his foot. He had to get evacuated from the Myanmar border back to Phuket to be hospitalized, and following treatment needed assistance to get back home. Once more it was DAN to the rescue, although by then we had satellite phones and could talk to DAN directly (24/7 by the way). His issue had nothing to do with decompression sickness, but all to do with being in a remote region with serious need for medical care. DAN was there for him. By coincidence, that friend of mine, Dennis Liberson, is now Chairman of the Board of DAN, and I am proudly now a member of the board of directors as well. For us, it is a small way to give back to an organization that means so much to the global support of destination diving.

For others who may ever have had need for emergency treatment, or even the reassurance of a free phone consultation far from home, the importance of DAN may not be readily apparent. But, of all the things we do as recreational divers, the small cost of DAN membership and insurance is the best bargain in our industry. Some may take it for granted, but not me. We require DAN insurance for all participants in our photo-tours, and most live-aboards worldwide want that same proof of recompression treatment and evacuation insurance for all their guests. Really, don’t leave home without it. Don’t even think about it.

By the way, this year's trip was aboard the Seven Seas, and it was awesome. great boat, and great crew, with diverse and spectacular photo opportunities. In the end we had nothing to worry about, nothing worth being insured for. That's the very best kind of insurance ... the kind you don't need.