How to complicate your life...

I do funny things. Not happy of taking the normal fishing pictures you can get using available daylight or with the help of a small flashgun, I decided to do it the my way, complicated. That is. During my last trip I brought with me 4 flashes. To be exact, 3 x SB600 and one Metz 54 recently bought as a bargain. To fire these lights I had with me 3 Skyport receivers and eventually one slave, that due to the strong light wouldn't work, or better say, would work whenever it wanted.

Now, to put together all these lights and make them work the way I wanted, I had to carry also my Manfrotto 001B light stands. The Manfrotto Justin Clamp. Another smaller clamp. Two small translucent umbrellas. Gaffer tape. You name it... All this stuff found place in my suitcase leaving home many lures I could have used for fishing, but this is what I choose, so much for the lures frenzy.


The idea was to put together two strobes on tne 001B stand, and one on the Justin Clamp as a backlit unit. The latter would not work properly because people holding a fish cannot be also asked to stand still in one very place and anyway, the distance between the rail where I would clamp the flash and the fisherman was always very short so the use of such light was pointless. I ended up lighting the subject from one side, and naturally backlit by the sun itself, using two flashes on the light stand but, at one point, in my mighty effort to overpower the sun I added a third flashgun to the stand ad went for the real thing.

Imagine what kind of chaos I have generated on board. Every time somebody had a decent fish I was removing the stand from the "safe" place, unfolding the plastic bag covering the flashes, turning all the darn receives and the flashes on, positioning the stand and the lights in order to have one pointing at the fisherman and the other at the fish, and start shooting. The light for the fisherman was usually half the power of those used to lit the fish, wouldn't always work flawless but it was pretty much under control. Anyway, big work. Tough, and easy to make mistakes, and mistakes I made, quite few many. Thus, the results in some of the photos were extremely rewarding and unique, hence, for as weird as it seem I will keep using my life-complication-combo trying to figure out how to make things roll easier.

Eventually, Lastolite seem to have heard my screams from the Maldives and put together a great gear : The Triflash. Strobist brought the news last week or so and I figured out is what I really need to buy in the nearest future (read, as soon as it is available). Is a triple flash bracket you can stick into your light stand and use with one, two or three flashes, as you like. As simple as that, great ideas don't need to be complicated anyway. Some more detailed info are available here http://www.lastolite.com/triflash.php

This is how my next boat lighting set up will look like, maybe if is very windy I will skip the umbrella but I'm sure this will make my life easier. Can't wait to try that.....

Strange week at the Maldives

This has been a weird week indeed. The GTs were not too happy to snack on a popper on the surface while they seemed to be gathering in large numbers in crowded "balls" right around the drop off. Mating season maybe? It very much looked like, and this complicated the things for us a bit. Funny enough, even the other usual reef dwellers were not there. Snappers, Groupers and many other animals were deserting the usual feeding plains, in favour of deeper waters.

What might have influenced such behaviour is not really clear but there are some hints we can evaluate. First of all there has been an heartquake in Indonesia the week before our arrival. Nothing happened to the Maldives, no Tsunami or alike, but is possible that the fish noticed that. And another clue was the water temperature, pretty much below the average, with changes of current that would change the pattern of an area from one day to another.

Anyway, fish we caught indeed. The Dogtooth Tunas were especially cooperative, with two large specimen landed on jigging gear. Yes, jigging. This seemed to be the technique to use during the "foul" week, and this produced most of the fish and sure enough the biggest.

Great safari anyway, we are used to the high standards of the MV Madivaru crew and is always a pleasure the fishing and the off-fishing moments. Topping the bill the food and the after dinner time spent on the main deck all together.

Rotten Paradise ?

I have just come back from one fishing trip at the Maldives and once again, since I started visiting the small inhabited islands to take photos, I have been disgusted by what I have seen. Every one of those little gems is covered with litter and garbage of all kinds. Cans, bottles, shoes, ropes, nets, chairs, plastic, buckets you name it. Most of this stuff obviously comes from the sea, a place that many people still consider as a gigantic trash bin, but more often that not you see small amounts of this rubbish been dropped there by unconsidered people, who probably don't know any better.

Talking with a Maldivian guys, and one who actually gets 100% of his income from tourism, he said that nobody lives in those islands. The way he was saying it meant that nobody takes care about them or even cares for that matter, which would be more appropriate thing to do. The government does nothing to keep their treasures clean and tidy and to educate or control the people, and the Maldives are slowly turning into a very pretty garbage bin.

Not to forget the amount of litter you see in the current near the islands, floating close to the coast together with patches of oil, ropes, and debris of all kind.

I have been travelling to the Maldives since 2004 and things, so far, have only got worst. The islands where the resorts are located are well kept, but this unfortunately doesn't happen in the islands where the locals stay, and Male is the living example for this, and those where nobody lives, which supposedly are inhabited by the local birds and visited by the tourists who sail around the Maldives with a mother vessel, and lands to those patches of sand and palms, to breath the purest essence of this, supposed-to-be, paradise in the Indian ocean.

Keeping the islands clean would be a source of income for some people and finding the better way to treat the litter is a major problem that the Maldives have to face in the nearest future. Not an easy task, yet not an impossible one.

Maldives, new trip ready to start

Back to the Maldives, departing on Thursday, good news for me such is the love I have for this specific fishing Safari. Fishing is usually good, lodging perfect, food great and most of the time the costumers are top notch. In this trip I travel with a bunch of Spaniards, one Italian, one Austrian and one Portuguese guy. It is quite a blend, and I'm sure we will have a great time together. We have one stop in Dubai for a day visit, hopefully I'll manage to grab a couple of shots. You will see images of the whole trip here when I come back, stay tuned.

Maldives, an image or two

I haven't wrote that much about my latest trip to the Maldives. It has been OK. Nothing spectacular but we had some decent jigging and nice popping as well.

Few images for you of this November's Safari, I will be back there in February and I hope I will have more stuff to show

This is my friend Albert showing a decent size Barracuda caught on a jig. The fish pulled hard and fooled me into thinking it was another beast. At the beginning we all said "Doogtooth" because the drag was screaming pretty loud and the line running fast, but the lack of stamina of the fish put our hopes down a bit. A nice fish nevertheless. Many people hate Barracuda and I think they're quite good fun critters

Eugeni in a tough situation, A GT took his lure and is heading back o the reef. The heavy drag settings are very tricky to use, especially when there's no gunwale to support your knees.

Snappers are always among my favourite fish to shoot. Then storm helped creating a bit more of atmosphere.

A bit of hard work near sunset. A small atoll in the distance reminds us we are in the Indian ocean, at the Maldives.

Another snapper in daylight. The red color in contrast with the blue sky really makes for a dramatic contrast. There's a main light on camera right, a Nikon SB600. I exposed for the sky and the flash filled the subject probably at 1/4 of power

The local band playing at night, around the campfire in a desert island

What happened here?

We have been scouting one by one the passes of the atolls we cruised by, all the best, with the proper tides. The quest was for the big Dogtooth Tuna (Gimnosarda unicolor), an animal that can grow in excess of 250lb and bite a jig with rage. We sure hook some of them but none of us was able to bring it to the boat. Several monster strikes all burnt in few seconds. Broken lines, bruised leaders, hooks pulled. This is how fishing can be at the Maldives.

When we got to the southernmost atoll of our cruise, during a slow jigging session outside the main pass I had a strike of a large fish. The fight lasted few seconds and then the hook pulled. Sad news I thought, another one is gone. Yet, while retrieving the line I felt some weight. Then some pressure and finally the line started peeling off the reel at a quick pace. John, the skipper, quickly motored the Dhoni to the open seas, in order to keep the fish off the coral, and once in deep waters I started to fight the fish.

At the beginning everything was normal. The fish would take some line and I would get some back but at one point everything turned into a dead weight lifting. Boy, that thing was heavy but it was unable to steal any braid now, while I was suffering to retrieve every single inch. When we finally saw the fish under the boat we exploded with joy, they have been fooling us for so long that this was like a sweet revenge. To our surprise the fish was foul hooked on its flank, close to the pectoral fin, and this explained the odd fight. I surely missed the estimated weight by a great deal, it was 30% less than I though but hey, who cares, it was a nice fish and a great one to photograph