MRXRAY
Contributor
Picked up Recharge around 6:00 PM and met Hetland at Ft. Pickens a little after 6:30 on Saturday for a night dive at Ft. Pickens. There were a lot of fisherman along the bank as we entered the water so w decided to stay a little deeper and further from shore to avoid conflict with any fisherman.
We opted to head for the monster tires toward the west of our main starting point (Tire with rods) and look for Octopus but I didn't see much worth turning my camera on for during the first 15 minutes of the dive. Hetland was shooting regularly during the first part of the dive but I was so focused on finding some of our regular Octopus that I never stopped to shoot anything else. Tunnel Vision? Probably so, but I love those Octopus.
So after about 20 minutes looking to the west, we headed back toward the Pipe Organ and moved around the rocks in this area, and..... BOOM! Two BIG Octopus out in the open.....Mating! It's times like these when you have to try and decide if you wnat some good quality photos or some video. Vis was less than ideal and since the Octopus seemed a bit "Preoctopied" I decided to shoot a couple of photos and then switch to video. Well the Disco strobe lights were not enhancing the mood so the Male decided to call it an evening and I got just a couple of photos and just a couple of seconds of video as he took off.
Thinking we had our shots for the night I took just a few other pictures of some of the local's and was working our way back up the slope toward our flag when I came across a Gaggle of squid. Four large squid about 8 inches or so long were just hovering near the Jeep tire. It was real cool to watch them flash colors after the strobe fired as if to send some secret decoder message back to me that they too were worried about being eaten by larger fish.....
We made it back to shore after about an hour of vis that was maybe 10 feet at best, and kind of green particulate which limited vis and made most photo work require macro photography. It was still a nice dive and worth the trip to Pickens and the long strip of 20 mph Speed traps.
We ended the evening at IHOP to discuss the evening's diving and plan our next big adventure. Here are a few photos:
We opted to head for the monster tires toward the west of our main starting point (Tire with rods) and look for Octopus but I didn't see much worth turning my camera on for during the first 15 minutes of the dive. Hetland was shooting regularly during the first part of the dive but I was so focused on finding some of our regular Octopus that I never stopped to shoot anything else. Tunnel Vision? Probably so, but I love those Octopus.
So after about 20 minutes looking to the west, we headed back toward the Pipe Organ and moved around the rocks in this area, and..... BOOM! Two BIG Octopus out in the open.....Mating! It's times like these when you have to try and decide if you wnat some good quality photos or some video. Vis was less than ideal and since the Octopus seemed a bit "Preoctopied" I decided to shoot a couple of photos and then switch to video. Well the Disco strobe lights were not enhancing the mood so the Male decided to call it an evening and I got just a couple of photos and just a couple of seconds of video as he took off.
Thinking we had our shots for the night I took just a few other pictures of some of the local's and was working our way back up the slope toward our flag when I came across a Gaggle of squid. Four large squid about 8 inches or so long were just hovering near the Jeep tire. It was real cool to watch them flash colors after the strobe fired as if to send some secret decoder message back to me that they too were worried about being eaten by larger fish.....
We made it back to shore after about an hour of vis that was maybe 10 feet at best, and kind of green particulate which limited vis and made most photo work require macro photography. It was still a nice dive and worth the trip to Pickens and the long strip of 20 mph Speed traps.
We ended the evening at IHOP to discuss the evening's diving and plan our next big adventure. Here are a few photos:
I busied myself with finding critters to photograph, and found things pretty sparse. I think this is because we were diving at twilight, and it was shift-change on the reef. I was too late to shoot the day shift, and too early to shoot the night shift. On top of the crappy conditions, I just wasn't at the top of my game. It had been a few weeks since I had my camera down, and I never got into the photography groove while I was down. 
