Wet Dogs Shoot

Our first Underwater Dog Portrait Shoot was an experience we will not forget, and we are looking forward to booking lots more in 2013. In just one day shooting in the K9Swim pool we met 18 dogs, in 11 half hour sessions. Each dog had a different personality and so Nick and I had to work out the best way to get a good image of each dog. With such a short time slot, it was not easy! I want you to meet some of the characters we photographed on the day.

Casper and Jess made a real splash! They are both deaf. They are both rescue dogs. And they are both mad for the water. They jumped in right away and would chase toys, duck their heads underwater and were even happy to go completely under, right in front of the camera. This is our favourite shot from the day, as the noses are both in the shot and your can see their entry into the water and the bubbles they create as they dive in.

Alfie, the beagle, was not so keen! He loves the water too, but was very scared of our large camera rigs. It took all 30mins to persuade him to have a swim with us in the water but, with a bit of patience, we did get him to duck his head under in the quest for a tennis ball.

Kira, the lurcher, had never been to this pool before, and did not want to even get into the water. This was going to make it very difficult to get a good shot! Fortunately, the owners were happy to get in the water too, and gave her a cuddle to reassure her. Soon, in their arms, she was going underwater and we got some great shots.

After a full day in the pool and another in front of the computer going through the images, each dog owner was able to come in and look through about 10 images from the day. Most have gone on to buy canvasses, key rings and prints of their wonderful pets. Just in time for Christmas!

Branching Out

It is amazing how new opportunities can pop up unexpectedly every now and then. As many of you know, we have always enjoyed photographing our golden retriever Paddy when we are out diving. We have posted many images of him on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. And so we were delighted to be asked to come and photograph a doggy pool party at a new facility in Manchester called K9Swim. K9Swim offer swimming session for dogs for fun or for rehabilitation. The dogs love it!

We were there to provide unusual images for a news feature about it, but it has also led to us developing the idea. We get asked all the time if we can photograph dogs in the water, but it has always seemed to difficult to organise in the sea or quarries, as you are so dependent on the weather. At this facility, we will be able to run regular days where we can do underwater dog portrait shoots. So we have setup 2 dates, with the first already fully booked on the 18th November and only a few places left on Sunday 16th December.


Paddy, for all his love of the water, cannot be persuaded to put his head under the water. To get a really spectacular image of a dog underwater, this is what you want. So many of our new customers have been practicing in the pool to get ready. We cannot wait to get in and give it a try.


To see some truly brilliant underwater dog images - here is a link to the best of the best at this - Seth Casteel:

littlefriendsphoto 

Our day in the pool was a little more hectic for the article. While we thought that we would be getting 1 dog at a time to try to get portrait shots, it turned out to be a dog pool birthday party, with 10 enthusiastic dogs leaping into the water at any given moment. The owners throwing toys at our heads did not help the underwater photography at all! But it was great fun! Hopefully our first portrait session will be a little calmer. We will, of course, post the results on Facebook, the Frogfish Photography website, and our new website:

Wet Dogs

We will also try to get a blog about the day up as soon as we can. We will have to keep working on Paddy and his dislike of getting his nose wet! 

Trials and Tribulations (of a Splash-In)

Runner up in the Open Close Up Category by Nick Robertson-Brown

Each year, in the UK, there are at least 4 Splash-In competitions that we look at entering. A splash-in competition is one where you enter images taken on the day. There are competitions in St Abbs, Plymouth, Lundy and North Wales. All the underwater photographers have the same weather and sea conditions to deal with, so you should get an even playing field to test you skills against the others that have entered. They are tough! More often than not, the weather is terrible and you can measure the visibility in cm!

Caroline's shot of a shanny on a pier leg at Trefor

This year, due to the house and business move as well as other diving commitments, we have only managed to compete in one such competition. The NUPG splash-in was held around the coastline of North Wales a couple of weeks ago. The sun was shining, and whilst some of the dive sites were blown out, Trefor Pier was flat calm, with fantastic photography conditions. We had agreed to meet up with a few others who were entering the competition - and perhaps we should not have done! Keep the best dives site to yourself? Or share your plans with others? That is the question! In total, 6 of us were diving the same dive site, but with differing ideas of the shots we wanted to walk away with.

The winner and runner-up in both Macro and SLR categories were from this one dive, when the photographers had the whole of Anglesey and North Wales to choose from. Nick managed runner-up in both categories. A solid performance. Brett and John won a category each - well done! The thing about splash-in competitions that bothers me is not the diving and competing on the one day - I love that! it is the having to select the images to enter under such time pressure. I like to take my time, selecting a range of images, edit them a bit, look through them again, eve get them printed and spread out on our big table. But once you have dived, downloaded to your PC, you only have time to drive to the competition location and hand in the first decent image you find. I did not even get time to shower! And I was hosting the evening!

Caroline's atmospheric shot of the sunbeams hitting the pier

Perhaps this style of competition is not for me. But I will still keep going to as many as I can. I had the best day diving in the UK that one could wish for. We had the wonderful company of some great underwater photographers, superb conditions (I even got a sun tan), and the wildlife and landscape would have inspired any underwater photographer. So maybe it is not all about the winning after all. 

Nick also got runner-up in the Open Wide Angle category with the shot of Caroline looking at a shanny

For more information about the NUPG Splash-In and to see the images that won please click here.

Paralympic Athletes

It has been an amazing summer of sport for which the British people, and all the competitors, should be proud. There have been whoops, cheers and tears in almost every lounge in the land, as our athletes in the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics shone. Last year, we were lucky enough to have been asked to take a promotional shot for the Paralympic Games and got the chance to meet and work with 3 of our Paralympic athletes in the pool.

Richard Whitehead (@marathonchamp) is an amazing character. He holds the records in the marathon and 200m (which you cannot say about Usain Bolt!) Richard stormed to the gold medal on Saturday in the 200m. He still has the 100m to come, but was not allowed to compete in the marathon event due to the Paralympic marathon rules.

Liz Johnson won gold in Beijing in 2008 in tragic circumstances, having just heard that her mother had died, days before she was to compete. She will swim again on Wednesday to try to retain her title. Liz was a dream to photograph in the pool, as she is so comfortable in the water.

Simon Munn is a Paralympic legend. This games is his 6th in the wheelchair basketball team. In order to get the image we wanted, we needed to sink a spare wheelchair to the bottom of the pool and also fill the basketball with water so that it would not keep floating to the surface.

We had a great team of assistants with us, providing essential medical backup, surface support and safety divers. Each diver had an athlete to look after underwater, to make sure they were comfortable and could breathe from scuba if required. To get all 3 athletes in the shot was a challenge, but we succeeded in the end.

It is not often that we get the chance to thank, in public, those that give us a hand at events like these. So Alex, Gareth, Andy and Tom - you made it happen - thanks! We did this shoot at the Manchester Aquatics Centre last year, and if you would like to see a short video on how we did it - then just click on this link to see the video that Alex made on the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK1snZMd-m0

Now the London Paralympics are half way through, we have had a lot of interest from the press. The Sun used an image of all 3 athletes as the front cover for their Paralympic Supplement.

It was a privilege to work with these three heroes. We wish them luck for the rest of these games and for all their endeavours in the future.

Trefor Pier still standing (but only just)

Trefor Pier is located on the Lleyn Pennisular in North Wales. For many divers and underwater photographers based in the north west, this site has been a regular haunt. However, in recent times, the pier has started to collapse, with large chunks of the wooden struts now lying on the sea bed. Many people have said that it is no longer the haven for marine life it once was, and that perhaps it is now too dangerous to dive. Nick and I, along with Tony Gilbert, went to have a look yesterday. The last time we dived this site, on a cold February day, the lack of marine life was noticeable. So it was with some trepidation that we returned.

We arrived to flat clam seas and amazing visibility. You could see all the pier structure and the grasses and seaweeds from the surface. Paddy was excited to get wet and so were we. It was too hot to leave the dog in the car while we dived, so we took it in turns to snorkel with him, while the others dived and then swapped round.

Sunbeams streamed through the structure of the pier. A halocline formed where fresh water, running down from the mountains, meets the sea. Paddy posed as always and so did a group of kayakers that were navigating the shoreline. So for wide angle, there was plenty to keep us busy. The concrete pier wall is full of crevices and these were packed with shannies peaking out, and even swimming towards the camera lens. Shrimps, crabs and tompot blennies also make great subjects. Tony also found an endangered fresh water eel and a tiny squid in the sand.

The site is shallow, with the maximum depth at around 8m. On a day like yesterday, it is a perfect site to relax and focus on taking photos. However, it can also look, and feel, a bit like the inside of a washing machine drum on a heavily soiled load! The weather needs to be kind, but when it is, this wonderful dive site still performs.

The kayakers did tell us, however, that a section of the pier had fallen over night. Not in a wild storm, but on a calm evening. You would not want to be diving when that happened - so the jury is still out on how safe it is to dive under the structure itself.

Three Shires Head

We recently attended a talk at the Northern Underwater Photography Group (NUPG) by Rob Cuss about photography in the top 1m of water. Rob had ear troubles and could not dive, but did not let that put him off getting some innovative shots in amazing UK locations. One of the shots he showed at the talk was from Three Shires Head, where Cheshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire meet. So when our friend, Tony Gilbert, invited us, and John Spencer, to join him on a day trip, we jumped at the chance. This is how we ended up parked on a roadside, loaded down with drysuits, weightbelts, masks, snorkels and, of course, our underwater camera equipment, looking at the spectacular countryside asking "How far is it?"

The walk, through wonderful scenery, was about a mile! So after 20mins down a rocky path, we got our first glimpse of what we had come to shoot. The river Dane, here, comprises brown shallows, peaty waterfalls, and calm pools, topped by an ancient stone packhorse bridge. Our dog, Paddy, was in heaven. Repeatedly leaping up from the river bed through the ferns and swimming in the deeper pools.

The first shot Nick wanted to have a go at, was to use some remote strobes to light the inside of the small tunnel the river runs through. The picture below shows me setting up the lights for this shot:  Paddy is, of course, helping.

The water tumbles down the larger rocks, and so with your camera safe in its housing, you can try some shots of the fast flowing water. In this shot I like the mask, snorkel and neoprene cover left on the dry rocks below a tree, and the water rushing down the falls and splashing back up.

 

We had hoped for blue skies, but this will only give us a reason to go back on another brighter day.

Of course, Paddy thought that this was a fantastic day out! And it was. No need for tanks and scuba gear, which is just as well given the walk. Here is Paddy swimming in the deepest pool, showing the rolling Cheshire hills in the background

This location was something completely new for Nick and I. It just shows that there are some wonderful locations to visit right on our doorstep - you just have to think a little differently. Thanks to Rob Cuss and Tony Gilbert for getting us there. Where shall we try next?

Farne Island Seals

Well it has been a while since we have been able to blog, but hope to keep you updated more regularly from now on! We make an annual pilgrimage to dive with the Grey Atlantic Seals in the Farne Islands and this year I was without my beloved SLR! Jamie, from African Space, was trying it out on the Sardine Run in South Africa. So I was forced to pick up our backup camera and try it out. It is sad that the Sony NEX-5, in it's shiny Nauticam Housing, only gets used when we have a flood or other camera disasters, so I was going to try to make the best of it. What it can do, that my Nikon D200 certainly cannot, is take video, and if there is one creature that begs to be on the moving screen - it is the seal. Here is a link to my first attempt at filming them:

Farne Island Seal Video

We charted our favourite skipper, Paul Walker, from Farne Island Divers, who has a super fast RIB, a huge amount of experience, and the know how to get you into just the right location. As our group all had underwater cameras on-board, we limited the group to 8 divers, which gave us loads of room on the boat. The sun shone, the water was flat calm and the visibility was rubbish! All this rain over the last few months has meant that run off from the local rivers reduces the usually clear water to a green mush. But this did not dampen our spirits and nor did it stop the seals from displaying their enquisitive nature and coming to take a look at us.

If you have not already dived with seals, then book onto a boat right now! You can stay in the shallows, even stay at the surface, and if you are patient enough, they will come and bite your fins, grab hold of your camera and play around with you in the water. On surfacing, I glanced up to see where our group was, to make sure we were not holding everyone up, only to find Yo-Han and CJ laughing near the boat, each with a seal sitting on them!

As I said, I was using the Sony NEX-5 and had an INON D2000 strobe for photography and a Light and Motion  Sola 1200 light for video. I had the 16mm pancake lens (with occasionally the fish-eye adapter on). The only drawback I found with the camera was the lag in the timing from pressing the shutter button to the camera actually firing.

Nick was also in the water, of course, and was using his usual setup of Nikon D700, Sealux housing, and 3 INON strobes. It it a lovely experience to share. and it is always great to come home and compare images. Now we need to book some more time in the Farne Islands, as well as our seal dive closer to home, Puffin Island. To finish, here is a shot that Nick took showing me, with my camera, and, of course, a seal!