Shrimp in Tunicate

The difficult part for me to photograph the shrimp(Odontonia katoi) in a purple tunicate is focus. The size of this kind of tunicate is around 5cm, and how much smaller the shrimp living inside is. Thus, I have to be very close to the tunicate since I use Panasonic 45mm lens plus FIT+10 and FIT+5 diopters underwater. The siphon of a tunicate closes easily when something approaches to it. The third picture below was taken before the siphon closed totally.

In order to take a clearer and more complete picture of the shrimp, I waited there and tried not to have too much movement of my camera. When the tunicate felt no more threat, the siphon opened again. I adjusted the focus and took some shots.

For lighting, I placed two strobes on the both sides of the tunicate. In addition, I set a FIT 2400 video torch in front of the tunicate.

(all pictures are cropped)

Octopus in Bottle

First of all, I would like to say thank you to underwater photography master, Yoshi Hirata, for leading me to this Coconut Octopus.

It's my first time to see an octopus staying in a glass bottle. At first, by instinct, I positioned my two strobes facing toward the bottle straightly. I was so naive thinking the light would only illuminate the octopus. In fact, the bottle lip was totally overexposed by this strobe positioning.

After few shots, I found out it didn't work out and then realized that the bottle is translucent. I stretched the strobe arms and placed two strobes on the both sides of the bottle to light up the octopus staying in the middle of the bottle. Even though the bottle lip is very dark by this setting, I like this kind of output compares to overexposure.

After this shooting experience, I always try this strobe positioning when I want to take pictures of creatures staying in translucent subjects, like below, the goby in the bottle and the shrimp in the tunicate.

My first Sea Spider

That was a weekend in February, I went diving again with Fun and Sun in Mactan area. The second dive was Talima, Olango Island. This island is only 10-15 minutes away from Mactan by banca, but the marine diversity is better than Mactan Coast. 10 minutes after jumping into the water, we were in the depth of 15 meters. I saw something "crawling" at an area where some soft corals are. I took a closer look and found out is a sea spider(Anoplodactylus sp.) which is half-transparent body with blue spots.

I am not sure if sea spider is rare in this area, and as I remember, that was my second time to see this kind of sea creature. This is my first time to take some clearer pictures.

The following pictures were taken in two dives on that day. I used Panasonic GF1+45mm macro lens, FIT+10 & FIT+5, and Sea&Sea YS-D1 single strobe: