March 27th, 2006 by James
This weekend Sarah and I went for a photo hike at Brazos Bend State Park, about 45 mins south of Houston. We both shot 400mm lenses on our Canon bodies, and used a tripod in the late afternoon, but mostly shot handheld. The park is a great place to go to photograph alligators and gulf coast birds. To be fair, since all the photos say “James Wiseman,” my photos are the ones that begin KNOX and Sarah’s begin _MG 
Here are a few of our favorites – click on a photo to go to the full gallery:
This time of year, when the air is warmer than the water, is a great time to see alligators. I think we saw at least 50 ‘gators, from small juveniles feeding in a small pond, all the way up to a 14+ monster sunning on the lake-bank.
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March 27th, 2006 by James
I recently returned from the 2006 Wetpixel Tiger and Hammerhead Shark trip to the Bahamas, aboard Jim Abernethy’s Scuba Adventures boat the Shear Water. This year I had the privelege of diving with some great underwater photographers and really fine folks. Aboard were Eric Cheng, Alex Mustard, Paul Ng, Jett Britnell, Al V., Mary Lou and Jackie Reid, and crewmembers Jimmy, Grey, Laz, and Wade.
We had excellent weather for this year’s trip – springtime diving in the Bahamas can be “iffy.” We had one day of high winds when a cold front came through – when we had to shelter at West End – but otherwise the weather was iffy. This year, I knew what to expect from the sharks and the diving, so I was able to tailor my photo kit to suit. I shot with the 17-4omm L when I knew the sharks would be small, or would not approach closely, and I shot the 24mm f1.4L when the sharks were up close and personal.
I didn’t keep as many photos this year, but I am very happy with the ones that I did keep. I’ve separated them up into categories by “shark type.” Here are a few of my favorite Tiger and Hammerhead shark photos, click on a photo to see the complete gallery:
We had great action for hammerheads and tigers at the newly renamed “End of the World” spot. I didn’t get much face-time with the hammerhead because we had to abort our dive early due to difficult diving conditions, but I did manage one that shows the towering dorsal of this true “angry dragon.”
The reef sharks were still as friendly as always, and we were able to set up some great shots over the reef. This is where I got my friends’ and Sarah’s favorite photo of the trip – a reef shark over the reef and a green moray, with a boat in the background. At a second reef shark spot near Walker’s Caye, I experimented with shutter-dragging with the sharks and got one or two motion-blur shots that I really like as well. Here are a few of my favorite reef and lemon shark photos, click on a photo to see the complete gallery:
I tried to take some unique topside photos this year, which happened to correspond to running around West End with Jimmy, Al, and Alex, looking for interesting photo subjects There were other opportunities as well, some of which even took place on the boat.
We also got to photograph bull sharks at a famous shallow water spot where we had two big sharks show up and stay with us for a few hours.
Lastly, I should post a few of the photos I took while diving in West Palm Beach. The most rewarding of these dives was the muck dive underneath the bridge near the JASA dock. There were enough subjects here for a week’s worth of diving.
The Canon 5D and Seacam and Aquatica housings that I brought along worked really well. This was my first dive trip using a full frame camera and it was a real treat to have almost 13 million highly clean pixels in each photo to work with. I did experience some vignetting when using the Canon 17-40L lens at f8 or lower, but this is easily corrected using the “lens” tab in Adobe Camera Raw.
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