Capturing the Moment

Even though your classes will tell you to never do it, sometimes for the underwater photographer a solo dive can allow you to go your own pace. It does increase the risk a little but as long as you stay within a breaths distance of the surface the added risk is minimal. Today I headed out to visit one of my favorite location off the South Maui coast to get a different perspective. I often look for very small nudibranchs but today I aimed to get a bigger picture and different views. I punched up my shutter speed to get some fish pictures and worked with my white balance to get some contrasting reef scenes. And what turned out to be one of my favorites shown here to the right was taken from inside a cave where you can freedive into and then surface inside of. The light entering the cave is reflected off the surface of the water inside the cave. Two turtles shared this space with me as I set up for this shot. I don't often spend alot of time taking fish shots unless its somethi...

Shore diving Maui can be very rewarding. There are many spot on the south shore in the Wailea/Makena area that are very worth exploring. My favorite to take visitors to is a place called 5 Graves. It is just north of Makena Landing and also known as 'Turtle Town' because of the number of turtles there, and '5 Caves' because of the numerous underwater caves and swim throughs created by lava.   The caves are perfect resting spots for Hawaiian Green Sea turtles and White Tip Reef Sharks. So if you are looking to see it all on one dive this is the place. My friends Nate, Kelly, and Brian all joined me on this dive and we were extremely lucky. Turtles were everywhere! Some were resting in caves, others coming up to breathe at the surface, and another very hungry turtle chomping on some of the shallow growing algae. The first cave we checked out housed a good sized white tip reef shark pictured above. I went down first, saw him, and gave the shark sign to the group. Th...