White’s Seahorse

Blogged by Simon on February 27, 2010 1:04am | Last updated by Simon on August 15, 2010 10:58pm | Category: Underwater Photography | Get a Print Get a Print |

White's SeahorseSince the Ornate Ghost Pipefish has been reported in Sydney waters about three weeks ago, we have been heavily night diving, looking for it. While I am unable to declare this mission a success yet, we found no less than seven White’s seahorses (Hippocampus whitei) in Chowder Bay last night during our search, which is the most I have counted on a single dive there.

This one was hanging onto a small metal frame, surrounded by three others, (possibly during a mating dance), all of them were bright yellow.

Camera settings: Nikon D300, Nikon 60mm macro lens, ISO 200, f/20 for 1/320s in manual mode, plus manual flash. This photo has been cleaned from backscatter with a clonestamp in Photoshop, level adjusted in Aperture, and processed with the Low Key filter in Color Efex Pro for Aperture to compensate for overflashing. I also applied the cross processing filter in Color Efex Pro to better separate the tones of the subject from it’s background.

Tags: , , , , ,

Comment using Facebook

  1. scott gietler
    on February 27th, 2010
    1

    nice find Simon, sounds like a seahorse rich area. hope you find an Ornate ghost pipefish soon! – Scott

  2. Aquagrrl
    on February 27th, 2010
    2

    Cool photo! If I can ask, why night diving? I don’t know anything about diving, so I apologize if its a dumb question. I would assume that they would be easier to spot during the day.

  3. Simon
    on February 27th, 2010
    3

    Hi Aquagrrl,

    yes definitely easier to see during the day, though most small things are easier to approach after dark. Main reason I’m night diving is that I have a day time job though :)

    Cheers, Simon

Not on Facebook?

Sign in using Google | Twitter | Yahoo

or:

Fill in all fields below and press submit