Port Blair. Andaman islands. India. Black and White and Duotone images

I have a couple of shots of this man and his buffalos that I like better but, for some strange reason I shot them at 1/15sec at f22 and they are blurred and obviously unsharp... Misteries of the photographic world. This one has been cropped a bit to improve the composition and edited into B&W, in fact the color of the water was not very appealing and this kind of vintage looks suits the image better. It is some sort of photo reportage from a country that offers to the photographer able to grab them, continous and repeated chances for memorable shots.

Check this other photo, a wrecked house in Port Blair again. I took it from the van while driving around the city, and edited in duotone because it looked better to me. Things like this are all over the place, on every corner, some are fully colored some are grey and dusty. I'll be back to the Andaman in one month, and I wonder what i will shoot this time. I'm a tad shy to steal people's images but I will probably make good use of the 70-200 to do a bit of portraiture

Macro shots of products with a Fisheye lens

I’ve been thinking for a while about doing some macro stuff with the fisheye, and today I finally gave it a try. I have a Nikkor 10.fmm f2.8 fisheye lens that I really love. I don’t use it as much as I would because it the pictures tend to get tiring, but every once in a while it comes handy when doing some fishing portraits or landscapes.

This is quite an interesting result.

Not many people know that this lens can focus at a distance of…. I don’t know exactly but basically, you can rub the lens against the subject, as I proved once again today. You can then imagine how special of a macro lens can be. Everything is dramatically distorted; distance between foreground and background absolutely exaggerated, and quite some problems not get in between the light and what you are shooting

Still something that at least will make you smile

Well, if I can be let's say at 2cm from the subject, and have a softbox on top of me or slightly facing towards me, I will have to do some magic trick not to have the shadow of the camera, or my head, covering half of my product. Another issue is how to trigger the flash with the CLS. If I’m under the softbox, it is quite difficult that the sparkle of the pop up on my Nikon can be seen by the SB800 remote unit that is covered by the softbox itself. I leant it today the hard way.

Here we are getting worst, nothing really interesting about it

To find a solution I had to pull the good old’ remote cable and trigger the flash with that one, while putting the other flash in slave. Too bad my chord is so short that the softbox, most of the times, was falling on top of myself and the product. 

Anyway, when I started shooting the lure I had the confirmation that another of my fear was being confirmed. The background, for as wide and tall as it could be, was not enough to cover the 180º vision of the lens. Fortunately is not big deal because the light was quite dim and at 1/200sec and f9 everything turned almost dark (and I had room to further darken it in Lightroom).

Help me say: UGLY!

So I had my happy shooting with the 10.5mm Fisheye, and the results can be seen here, some fun even interesting, some plain awful. I will give it a try again in the future, but I have to work a bit on some details, especially lighting, which can be tricky. For these shots I had my two SB800 through a Lastolite Softbox III on camera left, and an Orbis Ring Flash on camera right

Yellow daisy shot using a Orbis Ring Flash in the background and a Lumiquest Softbox III as main light







Today I had to take some studio shots and at the end of the session I stole one of my wife's flowers and had some fun. While taking some pictures of it with the Orbis Ring Flash I had the idea of using that very light modifier as a background, centering the flower in the black hole that is commonly used to stick the lens.

The how-to... Lumiquest Softbox III
on camera left, Orbis Ring Flash
as background



I adjusted the camera on the tripod to have the flower exactly in the middle of the black hole and did few test shots. The ide was cool but I needed an extra light to bring up the flower a bit. All that backlight couldn't do it by itself.

So I added an extra SB800 with a Lumiquest Softbox III and..voilá

Too funny...

Check this out folks, is jusy hilarious!

Surrounded by mythology

When you venture on a trip to the wildest places of Egypt, legends, mystery and myths are all around you. We went there in search of a legendary freshwater predator, one of the mightiest of them all. The biggest ever recorded topped the scale at 516lb in Lake Victoria, while Nasser’s record is a “humble” 329lb….

Yet the Perch was not the only fabled subject of the trip, we really wanted to take advantage of the visit to see some of the temples that have been disassembled from the valley, and reassembled on the highest hills, before the dam was finished and Lake Nasser was created.

We did all this travelling with the Nubiana MV, operated by the guys at www.lakenasseradventures.com, perfectly organized. Simple yet tidy and comfy. The silence of the lake was our travel companion, adding an incredible atmosphere to the trip.

Fishing was average, nothing spectacular but we had our chances and landed some decent fish. Yet, I believe that my friends and I had a truly enjoyable trip, one to be remembered or repeated

Dekka temple

Sunset fishing on the lake

Small Nile Perch

The mother vessel, Nubiana

One of the biggest Nile Perch

Releasing a small fish caught from shore

The hike

Sphinx' Avenue. Es-Subu temple

View of the lake at sunset

Save Our Sharks

I'd apreciate if you could watch this video. Is quite dramatic and for the faint of heart, but is truly worth a considerate look

Front cover shot for the magazines: Voyages de Pêche, Mundo Pesca and Pesca&Barcos. Sb800 through Orbisflash

This image has already become the front cover for three different magazines: Pesca&Barcos in Spain, Mundo Pesca in Portugal and Voyages de Pêche in France. Is a shot that I love, perfect timing around sunset, great smile and amazing Sea Bass. I lit it with the SB800 through the Orbis Ring Flash, a wonderful combo for my fishing portraits

The end of the line movie

Where is the truth about Bluefin Tuna
overfishing?