Today is the last day of shooting photos, as we have to submit all photos to the competition by early tomorrow morning. Not only is the Backscatter Shootout a great place to learn and grow with photography and diving, it is also a competition. Any photo taken by a shootout participant during the two weeks is eligible to be submitted to any of the five categories. There is macro traditional, macro unrestricted, wide angle traditional, wide angle unrestricted, and point and shoot. The traditional categories are where you have not cropped a photo, and only made general adjustments to brightness, contrast, etc. The unrestricted categories are where you are free to crop, clone, completely photoshop out divers, and edit till your heart’s content. I had quite a few macro unrestricted photos to submit (we are allowed to submit 3 per category) but I didn’t have many photos for the macro traditional category. So today I went out on the house reef for two dives in the morning and one in the afternoon with the goal of shooting at least one photo that I could submit for the macro traditional category. That meant I had to be really careful when I was shooting that the crop was exactly what I wanted, and that there was minimal backscatter in the image. With the help of other divers, I was able to locate an octopus! I was the only one down there with him so I had plenty of time to try to get a shot. However, he was pretty tucked into a rock so the composition wasn’t right. So, I headed back to the dock and stayed underneath it for a bit. Someone had mentioned that the fish underneath the dock weren’t as scared off by divers, as they were used to the commotion of boats coming in and out and divers entering and exiting the water. I came across an angelfish, and he was very cooperative and would do circles around me and the pilings. I was able to figure out my snoot angle and turn my camera so I had a vertical shot, as I couldn’t make it a vertical shot after. I was able to snag this shot and I was pretty excited about it! The background is completely black which is what I wanted, with no little speckles of backscatter. The fish is in focus, including his eye, and the crop is exactly what I wanted.
In the afternoon, I dove with Ryan as he needed someone to hold a light in one of his shots that he was going to take near the anchor on the house reef. After dinner, we got ready for the ostracod dive! Two days after the full moon, the ostracods begin mating and can be observed by their blue luminescence that they give off when they spiral upward and mate. I decided not to bring my camera on this dive and just observe as this is a very special dive opportunity and I am not confident enough in my camera abilities to capture that yet. We got in the water about 15 minutes after the sun went down. We used dive lights to find a sandy spot on the bottom in about 20 feet of water, and then turned off the lights. Not minutes later, ostracods began popping up, but just a couple at a time. I was next to Natasha, and we were both very excited. Very suddenly, hundreds of the ostracods emerged, it was like you were looking out of a plane at night and saw all the houses twinkling below. It was a jaw dropping experience. Ebby, the dive guide, would shine his flashlight periodically to double check all divers were safe. This also made the ostracods light up even more. I am so grateful to have had this experience!