 |
Welcome to Eric Cheng's online journal!
You are not logged in.
[ Log in ]
Archive for November, 2010
 Beautiful Dendronephthya soft corals ring a window in a boulder
During the 30-day trip to Indonesia I’m currently writing from, I’ve focused on taking still images and video with my insect eye setup (wide-angle macro) and a 3D underwater housing. I didn’t even bring a traditional wide-angle dome port, which has made it a little frustrating to be diving in some of the healthiest reefs in the world. Luckily, Don Kehoe is here and lent me his wide-angle rig for 3 dives. I went down and banged out some colorful reef images — felt like I was at home again. :)
Riri and me at Misool Eco Resort
It is really rewarding to be accepted by a wild bird, even if the basis of trust is based on food.
A lightning storm under a sky full of stars. Raja Ampat, Indonesia.
The night sky is amazing here in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Aside from the occasional live-aboard dive vessel, the Misool Eco-Resort is the only source of light pollution for miles and miles, and the lights at the resort aren’t bright enough to really cause problems. Point a camera at the sky on any clear night, and you get magic.
Large fruit bat in central Torajaland, Sulawesi, Indonesia
Most of the Wetpixel group traveling to Toraja are more used to photographing wildlife than they are photographing landscapes and people. Bernie, our guide, took us to a place where hundreds of large fruit bats hung on towering clumps of bamboo. I’m not sure what kind of bats they were, but they were likely Indonesian short-nosed fruit bats (Cynopterus titthaecheilus). A few of them were flying around during the day, and I snapped these shots with a Canon 7D and 70-200mm/2.8L lens @ 200mm (crop). (read more »)
4 skulls deep in a burial cave in Londa, Toraja (Sulawesi, Indonesia)
As an interlude between diving Ambon and Raja Ampat, 9 of us are on a 4-day tour of Toraja, which is up in the mountains of central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Traditional burials of the deceased here are in “hanging” graves on cliff faces, but we also were taken to see burial caves in a village called Londa. Although much of the caves were filled with old skulls and bones, we saw a coffin that had placed there earlier this year.
Toraja has a rich culture around death, and we spent much of our two full days here attending the funeral of a local man. 6 buffalos and 2 pigs were slaughtered at the event, and the meat was distributed to family members who aggregated for the 3-day celebration. We were invited in to one of the temporary shelters erected for the event, and feel honored to have been treated like family.
A pair of warty frogfish (Antennarius maculatus). The female is heavily laden with eggs.
We saw nearly 20 different frogfish while we were in Ambon, including warty frogfish, painted frogfish, striated frogfish and more. This female warty is full of eggs. You can see the tiny little male sitting on top of her.
A false clown anemonefish (Amphiprion ocellaris) aerates and cleans her eggs next to her host anemone. Ambon, Indonesia.
Most seasoned underwater photographers are inexplicably drawn to photograph anemonefish even though they already have hundreds of pictures of them. It is extremely difficult to get an image of an anemonefish that someone else hasn’t already captured. I took this shot with the INON insect-eye lens, which allowed me to capture the tiny fish and egg patch along with the anemone and background.
Coleman’s shrimp pair on a fire urchin, originally uploaded by echeng.
Coleman’s shrimp (Periclimenes colmani), a beautiful commensal shrimp that lives in pairs on fire urchins (Asthenosoma varium), are fairly common in Ambon. Fire urchins are typically found here at depths of 60-90 feet, and about one out of 20 will have at least one of three kinds of commensal crustacea living on them.
Using the INON insect eye lens (Underwater Micro Semi-Fisheye Relay Lens UFL-MR130 EFS60), I was able to capture two Coleman’s shrimp in a valley of fire urchin spines. Shots taken with traditional lenses cannot capture the colorful environment in which these shrimp live.
Pregnant harlequin swimming crab (Lissocarcinus laevis), Ambon, Indonesia, originally uploaded by echeng.
The most well-known dive site in Ambon is called Laha. Laha is known as “Twilight Zone” by the folks who first dove it – and for good reason: its mucky slope is packed full of the strange and outrageous. When we came here in April of 2009, we enjoyed the site so much that we spent 6 full days diving its mucky slope.
The new moon is approaching, and everywhere in Ambon, animals have aggregated to spawn. In a single large hole in the reef, we saw 4 large stonefish fidgeting about with their heads nearly touching. Many of the critters we are finding down there are stuffed full of eggs. During a midnight dive last night, I spotted a pregnant harlequin swimming crab (Lissocarcinus laevis) hiding under some sort of tube anemone. After a few minutes, the crab walked out slowly from under her protective umbrella and extended her brood pouch – a sure sign that she was about to release eggs. After 4 minutes of gentle egg aeration, she sprang into the water column without warning, releasing all of her eggs in a few seconds of spastic gyration. This photo was taken moments before she released her eggs.
Panda anemonefish eggs (Amphiprion polymus), Ambon, Indonesia, originally uploaded by echeng.
The Wetpixel Ambon Night Safari is underway in full force; we are doing 3 night dives each evening and are enjoying being immersed in a soup of the bizarre creatures that inhabit the waters of Ambon, including discarded diapers, tampons and other desirable subjects. Unfortunately, the nasty stuff thrown into the bay is part of what creates such an interesting underwater habitat.
Most of our group is shooting with standard macro rigs, but there are 3 insect eye relay lenses here at the resort. Julian and I are both shooting INON lenses, and Tony has a custom job from Japan. They can be incredibly frustrating to use, but successful images often describe scenes that have never before been seen. The photo in this post is a screen grab from HD video taken with my Canon 7D and insect eye lens. The main subject, a mass of eggs from a panda anemonefish (Amphiprion polymus), is normally photographed using a super-macro setup. Using an insect eye lens, I was able to capture video of both the tiny eggs and attentive parent fish. Each egg houses a late-stage baby anemonefish, an in the video, you can see tiny hearts beating and eyes moving.
echeng101110_0268858
Firesheep is a Firefox extension that allows users to steal login cookies on popular websites, which allows the user to login as you if you are browsing on the same network. It was release last week and has already forced sites like Facebook to issue statements addressing security. I downloaded it just now to test it out, and ran it while I logged into Facebook, Gmail, Amazon, Twitter, and other sites I frequent often. Here’s what Firesheep sniffed out:
Firesheep can login to a lot of the sites I use
Double clicking on an avatar or account in the sidebar immediately opened a browser session as me, logged into the website shown. Anyone running Firesheep on an open network can sniff out and login as anyone on the network who is actively using the websites Firesheep knows about. (read more »)
|
|
Journal RSS 