My 4-week cough turned into a 6-week cough, so I only did 3-4 dives in the Eastern Fields. It was extremely frustrating, but I enjoyed being out on the ocean with a great group of people. Here’s the video slideshow I made for the group:

Music selection by kozyndan. End credits by me and Dan.

Tony Wu (my co-trip leader) has posted a fantastic write-up of the trip, and a Wetpixel thread is tracking more pictures and experiences.

As always, you can see the expeditions we run over at Wetpixel: http://wetpixel.com/expeditions

I went on a fun photowalk with Robert Scoble last Tuesday, where we gave him a chance to play with a pre-production Lytro Light Field Camera. Scoble posted a thoughtful summary of the photowalk and included a video interview of me, which you can see here in this post.

My most-published picture is a picture of a juvenile loggerhead turtle being released into the wild just off of Palm Beach, Florida. It is commonly referred to as “the screaming turtle“. According to Google, it is being used online in about 21,200 locations. One day, I will unleash an IP attorney to hunt down all unauthorized commercial use. I don’t care about the personal use, as long as people attribute me and leave my watermark on the picture (which many do not).

Hint: to see where your pictures are used, go to Google Images and drag a JPG into the search field!

Photos taken at Sizzler off of Lembata, Indonesia. See the larger version here.

Commensal Periclimenaeus storchi shrimp inside tunicate, originally uploaded by echeng.

This bright green Periclimenaeus storchi shrimp lives inside a large Didemnum molle tunicate. I can’t find it any of the critter ID books I own, so maybe someone out there can help me get an ID. We did a night dive in Alor, and many of the Didemnum molle tunicates contained critters living inside of them (I saw 2 different shrimps and an amphipod). All of the critters fled from lights, and getting this picture took over half an hour of careful planning and execution. Photo by Eric Cheng, taken with Canon 7D, 100mm macro lens, Nauticam underwater housing, Light & Motion Sola 600 focus light, 2 x Ikelite DS-125 strobes.

Update: this shrimp has been identified as a Periclimenaeus storchi. It isn’t a true snapping shrimp.

More info on this shrimp:
- http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=612360
- http://www.chucksaddiction.com/car013.html

Pam and I went out on the water yesterday to photograph the Blue Angels, who flew for about an hour during Fleet Week festivities. A friend had invited us to enjoy the show from his incredible boat, which was stable enough for me to be able to use a tripod-mounted Canon 7D and 500mm f/4 lens. I’ve never photographed planes before—it was a lot of fun!

The full album is here: http://ech.cc/fleetweeksf

On Tuesday, at 3:38PM, an underwater photographer named Elena Kalis shared my talk with her circles on Google+. At around 7pm, I uploaded 33 underwater pictures to my Scrapbook. At 9:47pm, Vic Gundotra shared a link to the album. At 10:04pm, Brian Rose did, as well. Sergey Brin left a few comments shortly after 11pm (Mr. Brin dabbles in underwater photography, himself). Robert Scoble picked up and shared the album at 12:32am.

At 12:56am, just 6 hours after I updated my scrapbook and 9 hours after Elena shared out the link to my talk, 1,430 people have me in their circles. 1,430 happens to be the exact number of Twitter followers I have. That’s right: it took me 2 days on Google+ to arrive at the same number of followers I attracted on Twitter in 1644 days.¹ Granted, I use Twitter as a broadcast service and tweet about all sorts of random things, but the reception to my photography over on Google+ has been nothing short of incredible. After spending a couple hours on the site tonight, it is obvious that the reception to ALL FORMS of photography at Google+ is fantastic, and that engagement levels are extremely high.

Methinks I will be spending some time over there. Want [https://plus.google.com/i/e8Qj9ye8oEM:H3n9d7n4n-M](an invite)? +Eric Cheng

Side note: What’s amusing is that this post will get picked up automatically by Facebook and Twitter, but not by Google+. I’m really looking forward to a time when Google+ gets integration with HootSuite and other social media aggregators.

Here are the slides from the 90-minute seminar I gave at Monterey Shootout 2011. I always create slides without many words, preferring to talk through the points spontaneously, but it may be useful to some folks out there. When I have more time, I’ll come back and add captions with notes about each of the points (and why I included specific pictures and videos).

On a side note, I have discovered that the photo and video player over at Google+ is excellent as a slideshow player on the web (as long as you do not require intra-slide interactivity).¹ I can mix still images / video and re-order slides, and the blacked-out “theater” (to steal the Facebook word for it) is pleasing and promotes real-time interaction.

Link: http://ech.cc/uwphototips

The Monterey Underwater Film Festival audience at the Golden State Theater. I took this picture as an opener to my presentation.

Tonight, I spoke at the Monterey Underwater Film Festival, along with Berkley White, Chuck Davis, Stephen Frink and Rick Rosenthal. The film festival, which was attended by approximately 725 enthusiastic audience members, took place at the Golden State Theater and was put on by NCUPS and Backscatter as part of the Monterey Shootout 2011.

The audience was incredible—very “live” and reactive! There was great energy in the air, which always makes an event a lot of fun to be a part of. I was honored to present alongside underwater-imaging pioneers who have decades of experience.

Speakers: Rick Rosenthal, Chuck Davis, Berkley White, Eric Cheng and Stephen Frink. Monterey Underwater Film Festival, September 10, 2011.

I flew to New York for a Friday meeting and ended up getting stuck here for a few days during Hurricane Irene, which prompted the first MTA shutdown from bad weather in history. While in New York, I have been generously hosted by Heidi—thank you, Heidi!

Luckily, the hurricane turned out to be rather mild, and we slept through the high winds and heavy rain, waking up to a calm day outside. The only signs of the hurricane were a bunch of downed trees and the folks whom had come out to photograph them. I put a few pictures up over at Flickr.