Best of Mike #3

What I remember most about Grand Turk underwater, were the colors. I don't think I have seen as much pink and purple on a reef anywhere else.

This is the very earliest days of my underwater photography and the earliest days of my equipment too.

We had been in Palau the year before on a liveaboard. The captain of the boat, had a video camera that, even in the housing, was no bigger than a paperback book. 

That really appealed to me.... because prior to that I had never seen an underwater camera setup that wasn't huge. The light setup on these huge rigs always looked like something akin to moose antlers and something that I didn't want to do.

So, in the beginning I took a pretty minimalist approach to my camera equipment. 

At this point, I was using a point n shoot camera (Nikon Coolpix 950), had no lights and used an orange filter to overcome the pre-dominantly blue color underwater. 

The result of all that was that I could get some great pictures in shallow water if the light was good. 

The focal range of the "point n shoot" was great.... and particularly good for what I like to call "underwater landscapes".