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Authored by MVPix Photographer Jean-Sebastien Morisset This latest trip to Bonaire has been the best, and the worst.
We woke up at 2:00am on October 15th for a very early morning flight to Bonaire. Eric and Sebastien met us at the airport and we all had a great time on our way down through Miami and San Juan. We had pizza and took plenty of pictures in Miami. Sebastien is an especially fun subject since he doesn't like to be photographed. :-) We all slept a little bit on the flights and had a take-out dinner (by the seaside) of sausages from the Argentinian Grill. Sunday morning we had an early breakfast at the City Cafe and then picked up some groceries from the Cultimara. We dove the Calabas II reef behind the Carib Inn that afternoon, and continued to dive 2-3 times a day for the next 3 weeks...
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Several photos on MVPix.com were saved using the ProPhoto RGB or Adobe RGB colorspaces. These alternative colorspaces are able to represent many more colors (especially ProPhoto RGB) than the standard sRGB colorspace. This makes them the preferred choice for photographers when working with digital photos. Unfortunately, most browsers cannot display colorspaces other than sRGB. Colors outside of sRGB's range are simply dropped by web browsers. For this reason, several photos on our site may have appeared muted, desaturated and/or darker. Many older photos will now show-up as new since they were converted to the sRGB colorspace. Actual new photos, from our last trip to Bonaire in May 2005, should be posted shortly. We have several outstanding shots that we plan to print in large format for our apartment.
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 Melanie and I are off to Bonaire again for the 7th time in 4 years. We'll be staying at the Carib Inn for the first 3 weeks of May. Clay & Lee Lansdown, friends we haven't seen for a while, will be staying next door to us. As usual, the company, weather and shore diving should all be excellent. We've also booked another stay in October 2005 for the coral spawning. Several friends have also booked their vacations at the same time, so it should make for a great trip. The October trip may be our last visit to Bonaire for a while. We're planning a live-aboard trip to Fiji in 2006, and I'm slowly persuading Melanie that a cave diving trip to Florida or Mexico would be both fun and safe. :-) As a pre-cursor, we'll probably take a GUE Tech-1 course over the summer in Kingston (a few hours away by car).
After our last vacation in May of last year, Melanie asked me to look at upgrading her photography equipment. She's been using a small Sony P&S with a single DS-50 substrobe for a while, so it was definately time for something better. I wrote an article called Digital Cameras with TTL Support Underwater documenting my search for a TTL Flash capable setup. There were several contenders, but the Canon 20D with an Ikelite housing came up the winner. I figured we might as well upgrade my setup as well, so I sold my Sony F717 housing, Ikelite substrobe arms, etc. and bought two Canon 20Ds with a variety of lenses, two Ikelite housings with 5 ports, ULCS substrobe arms of various lengths, and two additional Ikelite DS-125 substrobes.
Curious about the lens/port combinations we chose? Keep in mind that we're using two cameras simultaneously, so there's some overlap in focal lengths. I also expect some lenses and ports will be more popular than others. :-) One of my goals was also to keep the focal lengths (and therefore subjects) of both cameras compatible on any given dive.
- Canon EF-S 10-22 f3.5-4.5 USM (#5510.80 Aquatica 8" Dome Port or #5503.50 Dome Port)
- Canon EF 17-40mm f4.0L USM (#5510.80 Aquatica 8" Dome Port or #5503.50 Dome Port)
- Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM (#5503.90 Dome Port)
- Canon EF 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 II USM (#5503.55 Dome Port)
- Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM (#5510.80 Aquatica 8" Dome Port or #5503.50 Dome Port)
- Canon EF 100mm f2.8 Macro USM (#5508.45 Flat Port)
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The Industry News Feeds page layout has been updated. The news feeds are now classified under three possible headings; Photography, Underwater Photography, and Scuba Diving. Please let us know if you would like us to add news feeds from other sources.
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 On Wednesday, September 8th 2004, hurricane Ivan passed 60 miles north of Bonaire N.A., sending large swells on Bonaire's north/east shores. Linda Baker from the Carib Inn sent out a few e-mail to keep Bonaire regulars up-to-date. The Carib Inn lost most of the boards from their pier, the Divi lost their main pier once again, and Lions Dive had to sweep sand from their offices. Linda also reports that Vista Blue is fine, Something Special is more of a garbage site now than before (but the 4 frogfish are still there), Witches Hut has a lot of broken coral in the shallows and coral damage by sandcover, some coral heads were pushed near the entry ramp at the Windjammer reef (aka BOPEC) and there is minor sand damage to the corals, there doesn't seem to be much damage at S.W. Cornor - most of the damage there was from Lenny in 1999. Margate Bay, Hands Off and South Bay were reported as fine. Petri's Pillar has some sand damage. Linda was told by someone who dove Baby Beach that the corals are in really bad shape.
The Carib Inn has posted several photos of Ivan and it's aftermath on their website.
Do you have more Bonaire news and/or pictures to share? Post a comment...
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Many visitors to MVPix.com are also avid photographers. With that in mind, I've added an Industry News Feeds page that includes news from several different photography sites. This allows photographers with interests in underwater or digital photography to get all their news in one place. If we've missed any quality photography sites, please let us know. The only requirement is that the site must provide their news content as an RSS / XML feed. Those that don't are listed in the side-bar INDUSTRY LINKS section.
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I've just finished coding all the templates necessary to offer our content in XML (aka RSS feed). You'll find a new RSS button on the bottom of the main index page in the News, Articles, Help and Photographers sections. An RSS button has also been added to each photographer's blog page for photographer specific content. RSS / XML feeds are a method of publishing content to be included on other web sites, or viewed winthin specialized RSS readers. You may click an RSS button, but web browsers are not able to display this type of content - it does not come with a pre-defined layout like HTML. There are several reader applicationss available to aggregate RSS feeds, including plug-ins to MS-Outlook and MS-IE. CNET has a good article on how to read RSS feeds and a review of RSS readers. You can get a more complete list of RSS readers from Download.com.
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In the future, we expect to handle photos from a multitude of photographers. I've been working on new features and processes to support this, including submission, approval, and payment processes. The newest feature is a Photographers Blog section. The main Photographers page includes a photographer selected photo, personal information, equipment used, and recent blog entries. Photographers may add entries to their blogs as they wish, and even publish selected entries to the MVPix News and Article sections. Subjects may include equipment reviews, personal accounts, upcoming events, etc. You can subscribe to notifications of new entries in the Photographers section by editing your preferences on the profile page.
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On the afternoon of May 13th 2004, Melanie, Eric and I dove the Salt Pier in Bonaire. We opted for a simple dive profile - out from the shore to the central pier, then north to the neighboring pier, then back along the same route. The visibility was a little worse than usual, so extra care had to be taken with substrobe placement. The dive was fairly un-eventful, until we headed back to shore from the central pier...
Hanging-out close to the central pier were two very large squid. We breathed quietly, minimized our movements, and approached slowly. I chose one squid and started taking shots - adjusting camera and substrobe settings with slow and deliberate movements. Melanie and Eric, next to me, watched quietly. After a few shots, the squid changed from a light brown / beige color to the beautiful iridescent white / orange / purple color you see here. While I concentrated my attention on this squid, Melanie stretched out her hand and moved it slowly back and forth in a squid-like fashion. The second squid approached and gently brushed up against her hand with it's wings. According to Melanie, a squid is very smooth and soft to the touch. A few moments later, my squid maneuvered back to the other squid and quickly flashed through a series of color patterns. Since we didn't want to stress, alter or interfere with their natural behavior, we left them to continue their mating ritual in peace.
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