My third day in Monterey, Jamil and I did three dives by ourselves. Our two morning dives we did in front of the shop, the first along the breakwater, and the second right in the middle of the bay, what’s called center reef. I took my macro lens, and while they weren’t as productive for photography, it was still fun diving with Jamil. Our second dive in particular was quite interesting, as we battled with 2-foot visibility for most of the dive and struggled to stay together as much as possible. While the backscatter was terrible even in my macro images, I tried to take advantage of it as much as I could, highlighting the backscatter while photographing filter-feeding tunicates.
In between dives, I got a chance to show my photos to Backscatter CEO Jim, and to Berkley, who gave me lots of pointers on how to optimize my strobe placements and camera settings for specific shots I wanted to get.
In the afternoon, Jamil and I got to go out on Berkley’s boat again. We went to a similar area as the day before and got some more unique wide-angle images. The real highlight was when we popped an SMB on the way up and accidentally scared a whole raft of Sea Otters trying to relax on the surface.
That evening, I got to grab dinner with a couple of the backscatter employees, and then we trekked down the California coast to a place with great wave action along the shoreline. There we set up to do some night photography shots. Unfortunately, a thick layer of mist and haze blocked most of the moonlight, but I still managed to get some cool shots of the waves crashing against the rocky shore.
