Stargazer, Lembeh Strait, Indonesia, originally uploaded by echeng.

A skull-like stargazer (Uranoscopus chinensis) lies in ambush, waiting for passing fish to feed upon. echeng100303_0252273.

More photos at my Lembeh Strait set.

I hate not getting perfect scores.

X-Rite hosts a neat color IQ test in which you arrange color tiles in hue order. I scored a 3, with errors in the part of the spectrum right on the green side of blue-green.

What did you score? (via @jauderho)

Andy Biggs in my place after his appearance on View from the Bay

Photographer Andy Biggs was on The View from the Bay (ABC7) today talking about his African safari expeditions and giving tips about photography. The 3-minute clip is online at the View’s webpage (or you can see it embedded in this post (click through)).

I’ve been on safari with Andy in Tanzania, and it was a fantastic (and photographically productive) trip — highly recommended. (read more »)

Abstract mushroom leather coral in Papua New Guinea

Happy Valentine’s Day, Lunar New Year, and President’s Day weekend! I’m in Southern California visiting family, and will be back in the Bay Area on Monday.

I consider myself to be an active conservationist. I regularly donate time, photographs, and money to the conservation organizations I have relationships with, and I give images away to other organizations when I feel that the donation will have a positive effect. Of course, there is a limit to the amount of time I can spend giving away my work. If I give away too many, I not only compromise my own ability to continue to photograph wildlife, but I also contribute to making it difficult for hard-earned images of any kind to have value in the marketplace.

Over the past two days, I’ve had a rather unpleasant exchange with a guy I will refer to as Wayne out in Maui. I am not going to post his full name nor his affiliation unless he continues to antagonize me. (read more »)

Over/under image of a juvenile sperm whale in Dominica (Physeter macrocephalus)

We have finished our 6 days on the water here in Dominica, and will be headed home later on today. Our last day was probably a rather typical winter day with the whales here in Dominica, which is to say that we weren’t dropped into a social group within an hour of leaving dock (as we have been on previous days!). We went around the south part of the island into unprotected waters and watched whales from the surface, but were not really able to work with them successfully.

Tony and I were interviewed for local TV last night, and I stressed that Dominica’s healthy reefs and clear water will probably not be seen by underwater photographers (other than the cruise ship happy-snappy people) until the transportation problem here is fixed. American Eagle has strict limits on baggage, and leaving here requires an overnight in San Juan. It takes me longer to get to and from Dominica than it does for me to get to Bali, and even if it were possible to get dive gear and camera rig here via indirect international check-in, it might be impossible to get the gear out.

It has been an incredible adventure, and I will certainly be back one day! [see all photos at Flickr] (read more »)

Andrew Armour and Scar, his sperm whale buddy

I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to have met Scar, a 10-year old male sperm whale in Dominica. Andrew Armour has befriended Scar and has known Scar since he was a newborn calf.

Here are two photos of Andrew interacting with Scar. (read more »)

A sperm whale calf in Dominica.. Photo taken under permit.

Day 5: yet another fantastic day on the water! We spent most of the day swimming with whales, and all of us have aching muscles. Scar came around for a bit but didn’t seem to want to play. Although we saw groups of up to 8 sperm whales at once, only smaller groups (2-3) seemed to be socializing at the surface. We spent a lot of time with a calf, who let us hang out with him for about twenty minutes.

It’s getting harder and harder to choose images to post because there are just too many! I know — it’s a tough problem to have. :)

As always, all of the photos I’ve posted can be found on Flickr. (read more »)

Sperm whale social group (Physeter macrocephalus)

We saw fewer whales today and spent most of the day looking for whales that might tolerate a human presence in the water. A cute little calf (we’re told it’s Enigma’s baby) was accompanied by up to 12 larger sperm whales, but none of us were able to capture all 13 in one frame. (read more »)

I’ve been shooting lots of timelapses recently. I typically shoot them with a Canon 5D Mark II in sRAW (small RAW: a lower resolution RAW file) because otherwise I end up with thousands of 21-megapixel images to store.

My timelapse workflow involves bringing all of the images into Adobe Lightroom, setting white-balance and 16:9 crop on all images, and exporting as JPG to be opened as an image sequence in Quicktime 7 Pro. I noticed yesterday that one of my timelapses had a jump exposure in the middle of the movie. Upon close inspection, I discovered that the change in exposure was due to Lightroom treating RAW files differently than sRAW files! I had forgotten to set my camera to record sRAW images and ended up switching to sRAW in the middle of the sequence. (read more »)

Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) rub up against each other while socializing

After yesterday’s incredible encounters, we left dock (late — island time!) and ventured north, where we were told sperm whales had been sighted. After an hour and a half of cruising, we spotted a tight bunch of whales on the surface, and when we dropped in, we discovered 11 sperm whales! 9 of them were clustered together in a tight ball, and 2 were off to the side a bit. (read more »)

Scar, a 10-year old sperm whale in Dominica

Scar, vertical and CLOSE

What an incredible first day! We’re all pretty much wiped out, and I can’t think well enough to try to put the day’s experiences into words. Instead, I’ll leave you with a bunch of sperm whale photos, which I posted to Flickr.

Oh — check out that second shot. Scar has the end of a squid are stuck to his mouth. We pulled it out of his mouth and brought it back to the boat. I have pictures (for later).

Scar, a 10-year old male sperm whale (Physeter Macrocephalus) in Dominica

We had incredible encounters today with up to 6 sperm whales at a time. We even met Scar, a personable 10-year old male sperm whale who nearly begs to be rubbed! Photos taken under permit. (read more »)

Sterling Zumbrunn, Tony Wu and me in front of our sailfish boat, the Lilly M (3D)
- click image for larger photo -

I’ve been experimenting with shooting 3D stereoscopic images with the Canon 5D Mark II and discovered that it is a very limited platform for taking 3D images. When two 5D2 cameras are mounted next to each other, there is a minimum of 6″ between the center of each of the two lens mounts. This extreme separation produces a stereoscopic effect that is too pronounced when using normal lenses (20mm and longer) — unless you shoot subjects that are very far away.

However, I have had some success shooting 3D images and video using two Canon 15mm fisheye lenses. Subjects still have to be at least a few feet away, but at least it is possible to shoot close subjects. (read more »)

Atlantic sailfish (Istiophorus albicans) with a sardine in its mouth.

We left dock at 6am this morning in search of more sailfish. The sun broke through for half an hour on our way offshore, which was fantastic — until she was swallowed up by a sky full of clouds. As Anthony so cheerfully exclaimed yesterday, “Come to Mexico! Bring a snow jacket!” (read more »)

Tony Wu (in 3D) poses with two Reefnet diopters

Photographer Tony Wu arrived today from Japan. He is jetlagged and isn’t quite thinking properly. I’m sure he’ll be functional after a good night’s rest. He did, however, have enough energy to write a blog entry about his arrival.

If you’re having problems seeing the 3D effect, there is a larger version of the image on Flickr. If you still can’t see it, here is a page that has some hints.

3D image of baby Liam

I’m going to have a lot of fun with the LOREO 3D Lens in a Cap.

Beautiful work by FreezeLight! (read more »)

Bowling Ball Beach, just south of Mendocino, CA

Bowling Ball Beach is located approximately 30 miles south of Mendocino on the northern California coastline. The beach is characterized by dozens of round “bowling ball” like rocks that are visible and accessible at low tide. Bowling Ball Beach isn’t on any maps, but you can get to it by driving on Highway 1 to mile marker 11.5, just 3 miles south of Point Arena. (read more »)

Magenta slender anthias (Luzonichthys waitei), bigeye jacks and other kinds of fish above a Gorgonian sea fan. Carl’s Ultimate, Eastern Fields, Papua New Guinea

Many seasoned scuba divers have heard about the Eastern Fields of Papua New Guinea, but only a handful will be able to tell you how to get there and what sort of diving you might expect to find there. Most, however, will probably tell you that they’ve heard great things about it. The Eastern Fields are shrouded in a mystique that is hard to describe; it even affected me — prior to booking back-to-back charters aboard the M/V Golden Dawn, I didn’t even know where exactly where the Eastern Fields were in relation to Port Moresby. (read more »)