Best of Mike #101

I don't know if a sunset pixture is the easiest to take.... but it has to be a contender for the easiest to take well.

Similarly, I don't know if a sunset pixture is the most fun to look at.... but, again, it has to be way up there on the list of contenders for putting you back in the moment.

Lastly, I don't know if a sunset pixture gives me the most satisfaction when I look at it.... but it always warms my heart.

There is just something about the end of day.... that I have always enjoyed.

The warm colors and the soft light, get me every time.

And when all of that comes at the end of a day, in a tropical paradise ... BAZINGA!

Best of Mike #100

I'm kind of tickled that this particular pixture ended up as the 100th post to Best of Mike.

Of all the things that we could see, while diving, none is more fascinating for Linda than Seahorses.

As those of you who follow my blog know, Linda is my spotter.... and an excellent one at that.

But in the, almost 1100 hundred, dives we have made together, we have seen Seahorses exactly twice.... and I have a pixture from only one of those encounters.

In both cases it was a dive guide, not Linda, that found them for us. A frustration for someone who routinely finds very cool things much smaller than a seahorse for me to photograph.

I don't tell this story to taunt my dive buddy but rather to celebrate the importance that this particular pixture holds for us.

There are over 47 different varieties of Seahorses, all of whom like to live in sheltered areas, like the sea grasses, of shallow water.

There is a lot to know about Seahorses ... covering subjects as varied as "courtship", "monogamy" and their role in "Chinese medicine".

If you would like to know more, I recommend the article you will find on Wikipedia.

Even their scientific name "hippocampus" is just plain cool.

Best of Mike #99

Sea Pearls are one of the largest single cells found in either the animal or the plant kingdoms.

They are dark green in color, with a bright reflective sheen and often covered in a thin silver or lavender algae.

They attach themselves to the substrate by fine hair-like runners.

Best of Mike_98

Sometimes, your mistakes make a good pixture.

This is a Damselfish that is brownish, grey in color with some yellow highlights.

This was the 1st trip for a new camera (Nikon D100) and for a reason that have long since forgotten, the strobe did not fire.

Therefore there wasn't enough light to overcome the natural blue cast of the water.

So, you get a blue fish that is never blue in nature.... making for an interesting and unique pixture.

Best of Mike #97

Every dive resort has a "transition day".

The day when the current group of divers pack up and head home and the next group arrives and settles in.

All the boats are at the dock and the wetsuit hangars are empty.... at least for a few hours.

Let's make this our farewell pixture for our visit to Cayman Brac.

I can actually hear some of you saying it.... "wouldn't be surprised if we are headed back to either Bonaire or Cozumel".

Clever group.... Cozumel is exactly where we are going next.

Best of Mike #96

Sometimes you know as soon as you look at it that you have a great pixture.

Such was the case with the Eagle Ray shot, I took on our recent trip to Cozumel and immediately posted to the "Best of Mike".

But part of the magic of digital photography, is that sometimes you don't realize you have a good one until you work it a little in post production.

This pixture of a Spotted Cleaner Shrimp, looking for a meal among the arms of an Anemone, turned out be a candidate for "best of the week".... and maybe even, one of the better ones I have ever taken.

So, I'm posting it to the Best of Mike too.

Best of Mike #95

It's snowing again this morning, in Denver.

I am tucked away warmly inside, having a lazy morning.

But that doesn't mean I'm not yearning for some sun, warm air and clear water.

When I got ready to write today's post, it was this pixture that grabbed my attention.

This is the outside of the dining hall at our resort in Cayman Brac.

On the inside it looked pretty much like every cafeteria you have ever been in.

But the outside was just so Caribbean with the bright light and strong colors.

Best of Mike #94

Winding his way thru the corals and soft corals as they so often do is a Two Spot Butterflyfish.

There are about 114 different varieties of Butterflyfish most of which are brightly colored and very often adorned with spots or stripes.

This particular one has an eyeball like spot at one end and the real eye at the other. The belief being that it will provide a moment of confusion to it's predators and a chance to escape.

They can be found on reefs everywhere, pecking at the coral in search of polyps, worms and other small invertebrates, that they call a meal.

At night they settle in to cracks or crevices on the reef, their bright colors fading to make them less visible to predators as they sleep.

Best of Mike #93

Many things about scuba diving amaze me.... not the least of which, is the things that are pretty underwater and ugly on land.

This is one of those things, a Flamingo Tongue.... it is a snail.

You know what a snail looks like on land.... nothing good until maybe it ends up as escargot. Even then, we are talking taste and not visual.

The shell of a Flamingo Tongue is actually white... all the color is in the living soft tissue, a mantle, that is stretched over the shell.

A mantle is highly muscular and is common to all mollusks.

By contracting this powerful muscle, some use it to shoot water through a siphon and propel themselves through the water.

Others use it as foot to propel themselves along the bottom.

And still others, find a third use.... anchoring themselves to a host.

Best of Mike #92

This has long been one of my favorite pixtures.

It was taken back in the days when I still shot with a Nikon 990 (a point-n-shoot camera).

Overall that set up either had too much strobe or not enough aperture, so there were a lot of pixtures that I could get and that is why a eventually moved on.

But one of the things that it did real well was this type of "underwater landscape" pixture.

This is really just a Tube Sponge growing horizontally from the face of the wall.

But in my fertile imagination it is the terminus of a secret passage that leads deep into the reef.

The Striped Gobe that you see perched on the lip of the sponge has just completed a secret mission deep into the inner reaches of the Kingdom of Coral and is now exiting the tunnel at the end of his long and harrowing adventure.