Last April, we had a truly charming feature in Germany’s GEO Magazine on the Coral Triangle’s colourful and cryptic marine creatures – a sure sign of biodiversity in this ecoregion. Soon it will also come out in GEO International magazines all over the world in around 16 countries!

Related posts:

1. The Coral Triangle featured in the BBC Wildlife Magazine
2. Photography in the Coral Triangle – by Jürgen Freund
3. Coral Triangle Expedition Cover Stories

We have been working hard to promote the Coral Triangle through our pictures. The images we accumulated during the whole 18 month expedition is slowly getting its proper exposure in the world. For starters, here’s a beautiful portfolio last March in BBC Wildlife Magazine. Enjoy the magnificent Coral Triangle!

Related posts:

1. GEO Magazine features Fish Faces of the Coral Triangle
2. Photography in the Coral Triangle – by Jürgen Freund
3. Coral Triangle Expedition Cover Stories

S20 02.060 E148 13.917 – Bowen, Queensland, Australia

About a year ago, we wrapped up our epic 18-month Coral Triangle photo expedition with our last leg in Timor Leste. We finished a long photographic marathon and yes, we were eager to finally see the end of it and go home. Now, a year of rest and intense office work later, we’re missing it. Only upon re-reading the archived blog entries am I reminded that we really did it.

When we were asked by Charlie Stevens of WWF Australia to photograph a distressing calamity – that of our marine ambassadors, the green turtles, sick with a debilitating fibropapilloma virus along the Bowen coast of North Queensland, Charlie didn’t wait long for our answer.

Dr. Leo Foyle holds on to Roxy the green turtle. Roxy has a severe case of fibropapilloma virus and has been in the JCU lab for many weeks undergoing observation and care.

By mid-May, we were ready to hit the road. We packed our camping gear, cameras and underwater housings and drove to Bowen to join a two-day turtle research activity led by the Indigenous Gudjuda landowners, James Cook University marine virologists, Cardwell Indigenous Girringun Rangers, Sea Turtle Foundation, WWF Australia, the Bowen community and many volunteers. There are many questions left unanswered about this horrific virus and we were all there to try to help the researchers and scientists gather more data.

Bowen was buzzing with energy. The traditional Gudjuda (Saltwater People) elders welcomed all of us before the hard work of catching turtles and gathering scientific data began.

Turtle research started with catching a turtle by turtle rodeo.

Chris Muriata, Indigenous Ranger from Girringun, Cardwell with his newly caught green turtle.

Charlie Stevens was the turtle jumper on our boat. It was all new to him but he was determined! For a novice, he did well catching two green turtles.

JCU volunteer Ron Goodwin tags and measures the green turtle Charlie Stevens caught.

By late morning, the turtles caught were brought to the mobile lab by the beach with the marine virologists assisted by a battalion of volunteers. The tide was very low and the beach by then was wide and far from the shore – this didn’t stop everyone pitching in to carry the heavy turtles.

Lacie Hansen daughter of a Girringun Indigenous ranger from Cardwell carries a green turtle to shore.

Bowen Surf Lifesaver Club Captain Trevor Armstrong, Sea Turtle Foundation Project Manager Julie Traweek & JCU volunteers carry a big green turtle to shore.

And the scary efficient data gathering was underway. The turtles were calmed down with their heads covered with a cloth pouch. They were weighed, measured and photographed.

Dr. Ellen Ariel, marine virologist from JCU photographs a green turtle with Lydia Gibson of WWF Australia assisting.

Doctors/senior lecturers and students from JCU’s School of Veterinary & Biomedical Sciences took blood, skin and shell samples to find out whether these turtles were exposed to heavy metals or other pollutants. Water and sediment samples were also taken from the bay where the turtles were caught.

Dr. Ellen Ariel, marine virologist from JCU along with her Bowen volunteer 9yr old Yadi Dodd pick up a green turtle to gather scientific data from it.

Dr. Ellen Ariel, JCU senior lecturer looks at a green turtle's skin sample to gather DNA and other scientific data from it.

Traditional Owner and Gudjuda Elder Jim Gaston expertly holds a green turtle. He was one of the original instigator of turtle rodeo as a conservation measure.

From May to August, a different calamity arose. A massive number of turtles along the Queensland coast were dying of starvation.  The loss of sea grass beds after Cyclone Yasi and the floods have wiped out the food source of turtles and dugongs. There is a turtle crisis and turtle rehabilitation centres all along the Queensland coast are in need of help and support. WWF Australia started a Sick Turtle Appeal which ends on the 30th of September. Please please help with your donation.

Related posts:

1. Tetepare Turtles, Coconut Crabs and Seaweed Research in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands
2. Kei Island Turtles
3. Seagrass Bed for Marine Life in Club Paradise, Northern Palawan, Philippines

S8 83.872 E125 60.340 – Maubisse

Highland Maubisse was some six hours drive from Dili. It sounds like a long trip uphill but we stopped a lot along the way. One scene that definitely made us pause was the painful sight of a forest gone and the erosion that took its place.

High up in the East Timor mountains, passing road curve upon road curve, this landslide scene is sadly a common sight

Once we arrived in Maubisse, we were instantly charmed by the place as it was utterly quaint. We scheduled our trip that we got there during the weekend – Sunday market day being the highlight when people from far distant places walked or rode their ponies to the market. We didn’t come prepared for the cold and I felt chilled to the bones being up 1500 m above sea level! Brrrr, it was 14℃ in the early mornings.

Early morning fog covered the valley from the vantage point of Pousada Guest House - the place to be in Maubissi

Timor-Leste is one of only two predominantly Roman Catholic countries in the Coral Triangle, the other being the Philippines. I attended the first mass that Sunday morning at 7:30. The guest house where we stayed was conveniently right in front of the cathedral. During mass, the Timorese women and girls reminded me of Manila circa 1970s, when conservative feminine females all went to church in dresses and veils. They still do in East Timor! It was kinda nice to see a place where time stood but with a hint of the modern.

When we left the church, the second mass was about to commence and the next choir members quickly huddled outdoors for a photo opportunity as this nun, their choir director snapped a picture with her mobile phone

Then we walked to the market hoping to see all the cowboys we were told so much about. As these were Asian cowboys . . .

Instead of horses there were ponies

Instead of wild bulls to lasso, there were fighting cocks to kill each other. The buzz and energy of the public market captured the essence of Maubisse. It was wonderful. And the characters we met along the way . . . phenomenal faces . . . I had to be really bold to stop them and ask for their portraits to be taken! Yogi never does the hard jobs . . .

How beautiful is this man?

Asian cowboy with glasses. So many men had fighting cocks in their arms. It was like part of a man's dress code . . .

He reigned over his produce of tobacco and betelnut and he graciously posed for us

And the finale, a pretty young girl. The future generation of Timor Leste!

If you want to keep updated with our new expedition blog entries, please sign up to our RSS feed by clicking here or clicking on the “Subscribe to this blog!” link at the top right of this page.

And to look up past entries, go all the way down and click into << older posts.  Or go to the Archives on the upper right column of this page.

Related posts:

1. People of Timor-Leste
2. Coastal Life in East Timor
3. A Day in The East Timorese Life

S8 33.173 E125 31.634 – Dili

S8 83.872 E125 60.340 – Maubisse

Making Salt

When we were told days before that we were going to a place where salt was made, we imagined large, massive salt fields by the sea. There will be a lot of white ponds with salt crystals which could be quite photogenic – or so we thought. Then our driver signalled we were there. We looked out the window and saw a grey, muddy empty place with huts scattered here and there with no one around. It looked like a dry ghost town. And like in a movie, I was waiting for tumbleweeds to pass by . . .

Where are the people in the neighbourhood?

For a good 10 minutes, it was like we entered the twilight zone – tinu ninu ninu ninu – we were in another planet. All around us were mounds or little hills of hard mud and we just didn’t get it. Where was the salt? Our driver didn’t speak much English, so sign language and the little Bahasa we knew was how we got by — it didn’t get us very far.  As we walked around to try to understand the place and the mysterious salt making process, it was when we peered into a hut that we finally understood. Someone was inside boiling brine. Salt was made in the age old traditional manner. Sodium chloride or NaCl was from brine boiled in a wide open pan with fire, constantly fuelled by dry palm fronds.

We shall endeavour to show the process of making salt – a most ancient preservative and the magic ingredient that brings out the flavour in food.

Some of these mounds have, on top of it, a container contraption where salt water is poured

Salt water is taken from the mangrove backyard when the tide is high. So I guess this is where the mud connection comes in, as mangroves are highly muddy environments

Gravity feed trickles brine down from the top of the mound to this dugout log situated at ground level

Then the open steel pan boils the brine for 8 hours. The caretaker man constantly throws into the fire highly flammable palm fronds and he scoops out impurities from the top of the boiling brine. 8 hours! No wonder hardly anyone was there to do this long hot job!

A kilogram of salt is just a little more than US 50¢ !!! How could they survive earning this little?!

From the coast we travelled to the highlands of Maubisse – 1,500 meters above sea level with temperature ranging from 14 – 19°C. There we saw the much more lucrative industry of East Timor – that of growing of coffee arabica beans for the export market. The organically grown high quality arabica coffee beans are supplied to Starbucks which in turn packages it as Arabian Mocha Timor. Starbucks has described it as a perfect balance between the clean, fresh floral notes of washed Timor coffees, and the wild and exotic berry, cocoa, spice flavors of naturally processed Arabian Mocha Sanani. It’s a complex blend with up front berry notes, medium body and a clean finish. Coffees from East Timor are washed and have acidity, though not as pronounced as Latin American coffee. Coffee from East Timor often has an herbal taste quality as well — not bad considering these crops were devastated about a decade ago when Indonesian militia destroyed much of East Timor’s coffee industry after the 1999 referendum.

Arabica coffee bushes are given shade under these massive acacia trees

When the coffee beans are cheery red, they are ready for hand picking

The coffee industry is labour intensive giving jobs to many East Timorese

The freshly picked bright red coffee bean will undergo a drying period before they are sold to the mills

Not as attractive as when they were fresh, these high value coffee beans undergo many drying stages before they are ready for delivery. The drying stage is also a crucial step in determining the taste and aroma of these highly sought after produce

In Dili we saw the packing of freshly roasted coffee beans. Can you imagine the beautiful smell this place had?

And again we felt like we traveled a time warp when entering this warehouse where prime coffee beans were packed by the kilogram

If you want to keep updated with our new expedition blog entries, please sign up to our RSS feed by clicking here or clicking on the “Subscribe to this blog!” link at the top right of this page.

And to look up past entries, go all the way down and click into << older posts.  Or go to the Archives on the upper right column of this page.

Related posts:

1. Coastal Life in East Timor
2. Timor Leste Cowboys from the Maubissi Highlands
3. People of Timor-Leste

S8 33.173 E125 31.634 – Dili

We hardly knew anything about Timor-Leste as we plunged in head first to photograph it. Upon arriving at the airport, we immediately noticed UN presence. There were a lot of men in uniform and loads of vehicles with the UN logo. And yet we were told, their presence had shrunk considerably the past few years as they are slowly pulling out of East Timor. Peace was finally at hand. A short history of this place can be  read in a website called East Timor Now and this website gives a pretty good overview of the country now through pictures and some good background information.

I was born and raised in the Philippines and I felt a stronger kinship here in East Timor I had not felt in other parts of the Coral Triangle – first because of the Catholic faith and second because we too struggled and freed ourselves from many years of oppression. The efforts this country is doing to raise itself from the ruins of its recent past is so admirable and it is heartwarming to see the world respond. They recently finished their 2nd Tour de Timor and are, at this very moment, having their inaugural Timor-Leste Underwater Photo Competition to bring in attention to its splendid marine life for it is, after all, the 6th country of the Coral Triangle!

The third largest ship in the U.S. Navy Fleet, this impossibly humungous USNS Mercy hospital ship was in Dili for a week to provide humanitarian and civic assistance to the people of East Timor. Their medical staff from Operation Smile performed cleft lip surgery to many during the ship’s visit. And at low tide, many Timorese women and children came out to the coast to glean for marine life they can bring home to eat

Gleaning is done every low tide when the shallow reefs are easily accessible for people to walk out and gather marine life along the way till the edge of the reef. The favorite targets are bivalves, gastropods, crustacean, seaweed, sea cucumbers, octopus, and small fish.

This boy shows off his what he and his friends gleaned after half an hour of turning over coral heads. They arm themselves with long stainless steel rods to poke out unwilling-to-die marine creatures deep inside their holes

With two steel rods and a basket, this woman picked and prodded the coral rocks until she got what she wanted. This went on for hours until it was too dark for her to see . . .

All along the coast of Dili, gleaning activities were happening. Wonder if there are any marine life left . . .

On our first day, we saw this man throw his cast net at low tide by the coastal mangroves. For 16 months, Yogi had been looking and looking all over Asia Pacific for a cast net fisherman! And there he was, in Dili.

And in some areas along the esplanade, fishermen and vendors displayed and sold their fish by the road where cars would stop and buy what they needed to take home for dinner.

The giant trevally lorded over much smaller catch of scads and mackerels

By the coast going west, we saw how fish was sold, East Timor style

How much for a bundle of fish?

If you want to keep updated with our new expedition blog entries, please sign up to our RSS feed by clicking here or clicking on the “Subscribe to this blog!” link at the top right of this page.

And to look up past entries, go all the way down and click into << older posts.  Or go to the Archives on the upper right column of this page.

Related posts:

1. A Day in The East Timorese Life
2. People of Timor-Leste
3. Timor Leste Cowboys from the Maubissi Highlands

S8 33.173 E125 31.634 – Dili

Sometime April this year, we attended ADEX in Singapore. Yogi & I were invited by John Thet, publisher of Asian Geographic Magazine as well as Asian Diver and ScubaDiver Australasia, to give a series of public slideshows on The Coral Triangle.  In one of the days when we were gallivanting around the halls, a well dressed man in a grey suit made a beeline for Yogi and said, “I have a personally signed letter from President José Ramos-Horta of Timor Leste for you!”  ”HUH?! Say that again? I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that.” replied Yogi. So, our now good friend Sean Ferguson-Borrel repeats what he said and brought us to his booth in ADEX, hands over the letter and said, “it would be an honour for Timor-Leste to have Mr. Freund over as the Ambassador to the Environment and to judge the inaugural Timor-Leste Underwater Photo Competition this coming October.” WELL,  needless to say, we were bowled over. You don’t hear that everyday.

But was it fateful serendipity or just random coincidence that we had to go to Timor-Leste to finish photographing the 6th and last country of the Coral Triangle for this expedition?!  The newest nation on earth needed to be shown and we were there for almost two weeks to photograph it.  Timor-Leste is a small country right beside its border of Indonesian West Timor. Due to its turbulent recent history with its neighbouring country, they now have a very young population left.  Close to half of East Timorese are younger than 15 years old, and a lot of its mid adult population of age 40 up were eerily and conspicuously not there. That said, we still got to see many older adults and some amazing culture.  For a young nation, they have a pretty old and thriving living culture and this blog entry is a tribute to the People of Timor-Leste.

A traditional headgear called kaibauk adorn this man's head as he performs a dance with his group in the side street of Comoro to welcome a religious relic coming down from the mountains

A regal looking performer. She had a worn out looking brass gong that made the dancers dance to her beat

A woman plays her well pounded drum or babadok as they perform non-stop one Sunday afternoon in the streets of Comoro

This man holds up his sword or surik and has a smile in his face all the time that he was dancing

Then, we went on a day trip out of Dili one day and saw the countryside. Our last stop was a place called Maubara where there is an refurbished Portuguese Fort and cafe where they served some great locally grown coffee. A funny character in traditional garb walked about but he refused to have his picture taken. But when we went to the public market, there were loads of people dressed to the nines, Timorese style. Again we were serendipitously at the right place and perfectly timed. Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão was in town to talk to the people of Maubara! We brought out our black cloth and had an instant studio amongst the vegetables and chickens. Here are some stunning characters:

Hand woven clothes called tais, each district had their own traditional design and this tais is distinctly from Maubara

And some beautiful children. They sat for their portrait in Maubara (West of Dili) after performing for the Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão with drums wedged in their armpit

Great faces etched with character

Now how about that for a portrait?! Clucking rooster gave the final touch to this man's presence

When we saw this man, we knew he not ordinary. He was too creative looking to be ordinary!

Man with the orange headdress was the pied piper of these young performers!

And in amongst these young performers were beautiful maidens carrying on their centuries old tradition of dress and music

And one day we were invited to a special place called Ba Futuru, a non profit development organisation that help transform lives of Timorese children through peace education. The girls in the group were performing their traditional dance and here is a little glimpse of that day:

The smallest performer in the group, she nonetheless held her own and hit her drums in deep concentration

The vision of Ba Futuru which in Tetun, means “For the Future.” is to transform mistrust and violence into peace and self-directed growth by supporting the people of Timor-Leste to engage in creating a positive future for themselves, their families and their communities.

Related posts:

1. Timor Leste Cowboys from the Maubissi Highlands
2. Coastal Life in East Timor
3. The People of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea

April 2009 – September 2010

In 1995, when I was a fresh full-time wildlife photographer – after quitting my Industrial Photography day job of many years,  I went for 12 months on my very own photographic expedition through the Coral Triangle. I first visited Christmas Island, Australia for half a year to document the red land crab migration and whale sharks found in the clear waters of the Indian Ocean. After 6 months on that magic island, I travelled through the Philippines, Sabah Malaysia and Indonesia, traveling to the many places that we re-visited on this current expedition.

CAMERA EQUIPMENT AND ACCESSORIES

Back then I brought my Nikon film cameras and 1000 rolls of 35mm Fuji film along with some developing chemicals and an E6 developing machine to get instant results of my work. My Mac Notebook computer back then only had a black & white screen and a 150MB Harddrive (the size of only two TIFF size pictures nowadays). Email was the newest thing then, unknown to even many top international magazine photo editors. Old dive guides & Edi Frommenwiler from the dive liveaboard Pindito still remembers me developing my pictures in the back deck of this beautiful phinisi while I traveled with him around Raja Ampat in 1996-97! Even Raja Ampat was widely unknown back then.

We travelled with about 150kg of equipment, mostly dive and photo gear, by air, ship, bus, car and motor bike.

Today modern technology makes photography and travelling so much easier. Our MacBooks have 1TB Harddrives and there are no more films, let alone chemicals to lag around. The number of images are only limited by my work effort and size of my hard drives.

To accomplish the mammoth task of shooting wildlife, underwater and topside for straight 18 months, with most likely no chance for any maintenance if there was a breakdown, we decided from the onset to bring the most reliable equipment. I have been shooting with Nikon cameras for the past 20 years, so there was no changing of anything. I needed familiarity with all my camera equipment and I already had all Nikon lenses. I had 2, by this time old and dated Nikon D200 camera bodies and a Nikon D3. As this was a massive assignment, we decided to buy the two latest Nikon camera bodies for this job – a Nikon D700 & a Nikon D3x. But I had to sell my D3 to do this

So, what’s in the box?

• Nikon D3x (26MP for high resolution images)
• Nikon D700 (13MP for low light and all around images)
• Nikon D200 (Backup)
• Nikon 10.5 mm Fisheye (mainly for underwater)
• Nikon 16 mm Fisheye (mainly for underwater)
• Nikon 24 mm Tilt/Shift lens (to extend depth of field on planes)
• Nikon 14-24 mm lens (general wide zoom, topside)
• Nikon 18-35 mm lens (general wide zoom, underwater)
• Nikon 24-70 mm lens (general mid zoom, topside)
• Nikon 70-300 mm lens (topside)
• Nikon 80-400 mm lens (topside)
• Nikon 105 mm micro (for close ups)
• Set of extension rings (for more close ups)
• Three SB800 land strobes and a wireless SU800 control unit
• Two SEACAM underwater housings for the D3x and D700 with four uw strobes
• Manfrotto carbon tripod, an old one that I could also use underwater
• Arca Swiss ballhead with Really Right Stuff Panoramic clamp
• Foldable solar panel to charge batteries

UNDERWATER PHOTO GEAR

One of the most important things to shoot on this journey is the underwater world of the Coral Triangle. To do so I needed the right tools.

Our trusty two SEACAM underwater housings with their strobes or flashes

And this is how the uw camera looks from the inside

Depending on the situation I choose either a straight or angle finder to focus on my subject.

In order to get all the colours right underwater I use two of these SEACAM uw strobes or flash-lights. The batteries are exchangeable to have a second pair charging while I am shooting with the first.

Underwater cameras need a lot of tender loving care in order to function properly and not flood the camera to a sudden death

And in case there was no electricity, we brought a foldable Brunton solar panel which could charge my strobes, camera batteries, torches and our little subnotebook computer

Our first liveaboard trip in Indonesia was in Komodo. We were with many underwater photographers there and we all kept our cameras on the long deck table of the luxurious Seven Seas.

This is how the underwater photo equipment is easily accessible on a dive liveaboard. Grab the camera and jump in the dinghy to photograph one of the best reefs in the world.

UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY

I really like images that show both, the underwater world and topside in one image. We call these pictures “split levels” but they are also known as “half-and-halfs” or “over-unders”. In most cases I use a fisheye lens for them with an angle of 180º from corner to corner. Fisheye lenses are about the widest lenses you can get and this does the job very well. Here is how I do it:

I take the largest glass dome port I have (called Superdome) and keep it half out of the water. I avoid water drops on the upper part by simply spitting on the outside glass. The focus I generally set under water but that depends on the subject. In order to maximise the depth of field, I choose about f-stop 16 and adjust the exposure time accordingly.

Above is me in Misool Eco Resort, Raja Ampat, Indonesia and behind me was our wonderful bungalow . . .

. . . and this is how the split level looks like . . . but in Lissenung Island. Same type of coral, different location. Fooled you, didn't I . . .

Lissenung Island is in New Ireland, Kavieng Papua New Guinea.

One of the biggest problems underwater is the loss of colours with growing depth and water clarity. Depending on weather, location or even fellow divers stirring up the silt, visibility can be as low as zero. But under normal circumstances in the tropical oceans, it would be about 10 to 30 meter average viz. The bigger challenge is the loss of colours at growing depths (and distances). The colour red disappears from 5 meter depth onwards. To compensate for all these factors, it is best to be as close to the photo subject as possible and use one or two uw strobes. For most of my underwater wide-angle shots, I like to use a fisheye lens. As much as these kind of lenses distort on land, it is the perfect lens for underwater use, because I can go really near the subject. Here are some examples:

A 6 meter wide fan coral in Kimbe Bay.

We stayed in Walindi Plantation Resort in Kimbe Bay in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea.

Manta ray off Kri Island, Raja Ampat, Indonesia

We dived with Max Ammer of Sorido Bay Resort, Kri Island. It was only 7 miles by boat to the manta ray place.

I used to be an engineer a very, very long time ago, and had never liked that job at all, but it taught me some very useful skills. One of it is that I can design and manufacture gadgets for my photographic needs – underwater and topside alike. I like to shoot animals in their natural environment, no matter how big or small they are. For the small creatures, instead of a large dome glass that I used for big manta rays, I needed a very small one which I made a long time ago from acrylic. But acrylic is very prone to scratching.  After a design brainstorming session with Harald Hordosch of SEACAM, he redesigned my acrylic dome in glass that is now traded by SEACAM as “Fisheye Macro Port“. But Stella calls it “The Yogi Dome”.

Our WWF ranger team could get this baby green turtle (and some of its siblings) away from the villagers in one of the Wakatobi islands where we released them back to the wild. This picture is taken with the tiny glass dome that Stella calls "The Yogi Dome".

The underwater world is full of wonders, and as closer you look the more wondrous it gets – there is detail in the details. In order to shoot these tiny subjects, I need a different uw camera setup. Generally I use a 105 mm Micro lens to get close.

Normally I use a 105mm Micro lens for close ups. If I need to get closer to my subject, I attach a set of external close up lenses

In Misool, Raja Ampat, Indonesia, I photographed these tiny clownfish eggs, eyes wide open and about ready to hatch. They were the size of a tiny rice grain

Lembeh Strait is probably the capital of uw macro photography. The number of weird and interesting animals is staggering.

We dived with Lembeh Divers from Lembeh Island.

The problem with still images is, well, they are still. But the underwater world is in constant motion. Only video can show these dynamic movements properly. But on rainy or cloudy days or in the evenings, even an underwater photographer can bring motion into a still picture. It helps when the surrounding environment is rather dim and yet the ambient light can still be captured with the strobes. I use a longer exposing time at, let’s say 1/8th of a second and flash the moving subject while I move along with it. This takes quite a few trial runs but generally there is a goodie that comes out in the collection.

Stella flying along the edge of the coral reef in an extremely strong current in Tubbataha Reef, Philippines

Link to Tubbataha Reef entries.

TOPSIDE PHOTOGRAPHY

For topside, I mostly used the following Nikon lenses: 14-24mm, 24mm tilt/shift, 24-70mm, 70-300mm and the 80-400mm.

Bird Island in Tubbataha Reefs is one of the last breeding grounds for sea birds in the Philippines. I had to sneak up on crested terns without scaring them away so I photographed them with a 80-400mm tele zoom....

....and this is how the flock looks like

If there was no light (as in shooting in the dark) I had to bring my own form of flash or strobes. Aside from the uw strobes, we brought three SB800 topside flashes which I mostly triggered wirelessly with a SU800 control unit. This gave me freedom from cable clutter and flexibility in positioning the strobes.

In West Papua we were so privileged to witness the nesting and hatching of very rare Leatherback Turtles. The bulk of about 100 baby turtles emerges at night from their nests, but a few stragglers always get stuck in the chute of the nest unable to come out on its own. Following the tracks of their faster brethren, our WWF Patrollers located the nests and freed them from their sandy burrow of 2 months. We took a few pictures and then released the babies to the ocean. Here is where the wireless flash control went to work .....

......and this is how the baby turtle looks like

Link to Leatherback turtles of West Papua entries.

A big part of our photo assignment was to show all sorts of fishing activities in the Coral Triangle – artisanal,  commercial, small and big time. A lot of fishing happens at night and very often involve pump lamps or Petromax lamps. These kerosene fueled lamps deliver a very beautiful golden light. But in order to portray it perfectly, the time of day matters. There is only a 15 minute window – about 30 minutes after sunset, when the ambient surrounding light is about equal to the artificial light.

These two fishermen walk with their Petromax lamp at low tide on the reef flat to look for invertebrates and other creatures to glean which is a very common practice in the Coral Triangle. This shot was taken on a tripod at 5 seconds exposing time. I asked the two fishermen to stand still and not move during this 5 second exposure.

Link to WWF in Wakatobi, South Sulawesi, Indonesia entries.

I brought an older Manfrotto carbon tripod in which I exchanged all corrodible nuts and bolts to stainless steel ones. The expensive ball-head is an Arca Swiss one with "Really Right Stuff" quick release clamps and plates. The ball-head should never get in contact with saltwater. This picture was taken in a magical lagoon near Misool Eco Resort, Raja Ampat, Indonesia.

All topside gear was packed in this Mountainsmith "Parallax" backpack. Well, it weighed about a ton on my back and I carried it ALL THE TIME. This picture was taken in Moromahu Island, Wakatobi, Indonesia where this mother green turtle struggled to go back to sea at the height of the morning heat after laying her eggs that evening. She still had a long way to go till the water and we couldn't bring her there - she was too heavy

Beside diving and uw photography my other great passion is aerial photography. At some points on our epic journey we had the opportunity to hop on helicopters and small planes. Best done without doors or windows to sniff some really fast air. Just as fast have to be the exposure times of my cameras (at least 1/500s), otherwise the pictures turn out blurry.

With Jacques Branellec as pilot in his helicopter around the Tay Tay Island, Philippines.

With Max Ammer in his yellow ultralight near his Resort in Kri Island, Raja Ampat, Indonesia.

The beautiful Islands of Raja Ampat.

Island near Tay Tay, Palawan, Philippines.

POST PRODUCTION

Shooting is the fun part of photography and many travellers we met along the way envied our work calling it “vacation”. Well, there is more to it than that. There is editing and post production after the shooting. For all the computer work I have to do, 80% of my editing time is working with Adobe Lightroom 3, and the rest is with Adobe Photoshop CS5. Images have to be sorted out – selecting, deleting, colour correcting, cleaning out all the sensor dust of the image and finally properly captioning the selected and corrected photos. This requires 2 to 3 times more work than the shooting time.

This is how a part of the Komodo UW shoot looks like in Adobe Lightroom

We are constantly working. We had zero weekends, no holidays, no breaks at all during these past 18 months. Our schedules and obligations were so tight. We knew if we took a break, we would lose momentum and suffer the consequences later on.

Evenings were reserved for photo editing, even if there was a nice sunset in Komodo Island

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Related posts:

1. Coral Triangle Expedition Cover Stories
2. Mantas of North Raja Ampat
3. The Coral Triangle featured in the BBC Wildlife Magazine

S8 30.123 E158 00.957 – Chea Village, Marovo Island

Still in Chea Village, Marovo Lagoon, we concentrated in photographing people. The weather had not eased up on us and with the rains and occasional bursts of sunshine, we did mostly indoors stuff. And the Solomon Islander children were absolutely beautiful. Their mocha brown skins were shinny and healthy and their Melanesian features stunning. As we spent time photographing the carvings in the Community Hall, the entire village seemed to be peering from behind us, until we thought to put them in front of the black background. Instead of inanimate objects, we decided to concentrate in getting proper people portraits done. The giggles erupted and the younger kids eagerly waited for their turn. It was more the teenagers who were shy and almost resistant, but as the Star Trek Borg says it, “Resistance is futile” when Stella is around!

It started one morning when children passing by our house had flowers in their hair! How could we not photograph these faces?

The studio portraits deep in the islands of Marovo Lagoon.

Cynthia Clifford with Samantha Namusu playing hairdresser

Samantha Namusu again just because we can't have enough of her joyful face

Gege Boso, the shy teenage lass of Chea

Nerol Ghele was less shy and she identified all the people in the pictures for me!

Tanisa Ofai with her wild frizzy hair getting out of the fold

Gino Namusu from the carving Namusu clan

Rome Dickson had the most interesting profile

Cynthia Clifford stared with a faraway look. I wonder what daydreams she had

Related posts:

1. Talented carvers of Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands
2. Aquaculture Farming and Post Tsunami in Gizo, Solomon Islands
3. Tetepare Island Rangers and WWF Coral Reef Research, Western Province, Solomon Islands

S8 30.123 E158 00.957 – Chea Village, Marovo Island

After strong winds and rain throughout our stay in Tetepare, we were dreading the island crossing from Tetepare to Marovo Lagoon, New Georgia. We were bracing ourselves for big waves and made sure all our belongings were packed water tight and safely under the tarp. I woke up in the middle of our last night in Tetepare and immediately noticed something – no wind! Went back to bed thinking, maybe, just maybe the seas will be flat. I told Tingo and Yogi we’ll have flat calm seas and they both said we were still sheltered in the lee side of Tetepare island. We could see different patches of dark clouds here and there, but by the time we reached open seas, it was glass flat!!! It was totally unreal. There was rain, of course, but we had a smooth ride all the way to Marovo Lagoon.

Marovo lagoon - calm seas but pouring rain

We went all the way to Chea Village in Marovo Island and stayed in the community's only Guest House. Again it was self serve and very basic and absolutely remote, but it had internet!!!

The community computer, a solar powered subnotebook Eee PC, had a regal position on the kitchen table. There were instructions and computer lessons in the community whiteboard! WWF SI staff Tingo & Bill used it first and I asked them if there was internet and their answer was YES! We had been cyber deprived for more than a week now and it was good to just quickly check emails. Since we had rains all week long, the computer’s solar powered battery had troubles keeping up with all of our hungry needs. Oh well.

With the computer beeping to say it was low on battery, we all quickly checked emails and logged out

We photographed village life in our stay in Chea. We reached the Community Hall where the traditional carvers brought out their beautiful wares to display and our eyes popped out. They were so beautiful! A very eloquent English speaking carver named Huimes Namusu listened to us give instructions. Once he knew what we wanted, he relayed our instructions to all the carvers in the room.

Upon seeing these works of art, we immediately set up our studio bringing out our black cloth as a background

There are six types of wood used by carvers from Marovo Lagoon:  the most expensive is the king ebony, a rare black hardwood; queen ebony, less rare but still expensive black and brown streaked wood; kou or kerosene wood which ranges from light brown to rich dark brown depending on which section of the tree is used – pale sapwood or dark heartwood; rosewood, an abundant pinkish wood; abundant coconut tree wood and finally yellowish wood from a jackfruit tree.

A traditional Solomon Islands Warrior made of queen ebony with nautilus shell inlay carved by Huimes Namusu

Another traditional warrior carved out of king ebony with nautilus shell inlay carved by Huimes Namusu

Portrait of the artist Huimes Namusu

We asked Huimes if we could photograph them carving and he volunteered himself as our able model. He made a bowl out of piece of coconut tree trunk and after less than an hour, he carved out the structure of a bowl. It was quite amazing so see skill and precision work this ancient art of carving.

In a day Huimes can finish a bowl complete with shell inlay and sanding

We particularly wanted to see how the shell inlay was done. Huimes said they had to buy expensive nautilus shell for this and once he worked the material, I understood why nautilus was their preferred shell to use. The thinness of this ancient mollusk is even all throughout and it was easy to handle and work with.

Huimes carves out a groove from the rim of this coconut bowl to make space for the nautilus inlay

With the assistance of the sole of his foot, Huimes uses a little saw to cut out the piece of nautilus he needs for the inlay

He uses a thin file to shape the nautilus shell into the design he wants and glues the piece into the groove of the coconut bowl

Huimes Namusu learned carving from his father at the age of nine. He carves for a living and earnings from his craft feeds his wife and four children. Like majority of the people in Chea and the Marovo area, he is Seventh Day Adventist.  His weekdays are busy with either carving or selling his craft once a week in the nearby Uepi Resort. He and his wife tends to their gardens on Thursdays and he goes fishing on Fridays so there is food prepared for Saturday which is Sabbath. Sabbath is observed from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset. During this time, Adventists avoid secular work and all business related activities.

How fierce looking is this carved warrior?

Related posts:

1. Faces of Solomon Islanders
2. Tetepare Turtles, Coconut Crabs and Seaweed Research in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands
3. Tetepare Island Rangers and WWF Coral Reef Research, Western Province, Solomon Islands