Living Art

Give me a reef!
21/01/2013
Give me a reef that is alive with pattern, texture, shape and geometric form and I could stay there forever! That's part of the problem. Starfish, anemones, hard and soft coral dotted with busy, brilliant marine creatures, all glittering at me in jewel-like colours, make for abstract, living art that is so fabulously perfect. This is the aspect of macro photography that I love the most! Taking something relatively ordinary or familiar and turning it into something unfamiliar. Subtracting overall detail and looking instead for light and colour, creating an image of layers that still whispers of something living, breathing and vital.

Excerpt from my log book, which I named ‘the dive of nothing’ after initial impressions had left me feeling that I’d travelled a hell of a long way for a rummage around well, nothing!

“Amongst the rubble-strewn backdrop of an artificially generated reef (made from stacks of rubber tyres), all sorts of spikes, wormy things and strange shapes have revealed themselves. There’s a party down there, if you only know where to look. Crinoids of every flavour, shrimp city and a host of anemones have all taken up residence. Magic shots of a neon anemone, delicate ghost pipefish and a wistful flit of something dressed in pink spikes and black dots. Curiouser and curiouser!”

And a little later ...

"Current running on a macro dive is just not cricket. Sucked my gas down so much I ended up on M’s spare octopus, drifting back to the boat. Not great but hey, it sharpens the skills."

I'm talking art here, not gas consumption, ;)

Photographed off Dumaguete, Negros Island. The Philippines.