What a day. The bad news: my flash continues to frustrate me. The good news: the divemaster helped me with alternate ways to get good photos.
Flash not working:
When the flash does work:
What a difference! But since it kept failing, the divemaster suggested we go without. I took the flash off and instead started lighting things with my flashlight.
A flashlight isn’t as powerful as a flash so I have to get real close.
Hold the camera in my right hand and the flashlight in my left.
Point the flashlight at the little critter (all these lovely nudibranches!), aim the camera, and *click*.
This is the first time I’ve been successful while using the “macro” setting on my camera. I never really understood it before.
The divemaster used to shoot with the same camera as me, just one model older. So he knew all the buttons and all the tricks.
I got more and more comfortable with the method. By the fourth dive (having used this technique for three dives) I was getting decent at it.
Of course there was more to see than just nudis.
And some other divers, with a different dive shop, were also taking close up photos.
The dive master is great! He found lots of the small stuff. He ignored the big stuff. (I’ve never swam past so many eels without giving them a second look!) Except for an octopus.
And I couldn’t pass up this colorful starfish.
Throughout the dive we were surrounded by triggerfish. At one point it was hard to take a photo because they kept getting in the way!
What about the Crazy Italian Girl? Well… when we got to the last dive there was a random woman in the water. She swam up to us and said she’d gotten stuck and could we give her a lift. Her hostel was just on the other side of the point, but she was too exhausted to swim back and the owners of the resort she was swimming in front of wouldn’t let her out of the water without paying. So we took her back. I guess we picked up a swimming hitchhiker. Weird. When I asked what happened she told the story, and then said thanks for picking up “A crazy girl. A crazy Italian girl.”
Travel 