Back from rainy Great Barrier Reef - some wildlife and macro/micro shots

    The Great Barrier Reef is renowned for amazing underwater sights... but the weather might seriously let you down. I spent most of the two-week long field trip indoors cursing the weather, yet managed to get a few shots.

The field trip took place at Heron island, which is a large coral cay. University of Queensland has a research station there.

My new video: The hidden life in pond water

   It finally happened! I am publishing my second video about microscopic inhabitants of ponds. Also available on youtube. In this video you will see the invisible world from a perspective of a water flea. Mayfly nymphs, ostracodes, water mites, ciliates, and, of course, hydras make an appearance. Don't forget to turn on HD!

   This time I used macro lenses to get more angles and a better depth of field. In combination with microscopy footage, I believe, it works well. With the set of techniques I could show a more natural habitat, the kind of environment in which the invertebrates actually live. It's no longer flat, and the animals swim freely in water, interact, and sometimes get eaten alive.

   I made most of the filming in September, but was hoping to license the material to the wildlife movie studio that approached me. While things didn't work as planned, I got a lovely videography experience, and sold some short sequences to another studio for a project that is not announced yet. I am hoping to get some fresh material soon. This time I'm filming on an island on the Great Barrier Reef, and with plenty of cool tricks that I want to try. Besides, there's a lot of room for improving my skills.

   Cameras used: Canon EOS 7D and Sony NEX-7. Microscope: Zeiss Axioscope A1. Macro lens: mp-e 65 mm. Plus many additional tools.

   A lot of thanks to the friend who helped me to collect the material, build the equipment, maintain the animals alive, and generally keep me positive about the filming.


   Hope you enjoy it!

Divers vs reefs in Thailand

The picture above might look like something coming straight from my camera attached to my microscope, but don't be deceived. That's just bubble coral from the Indian Ocean and not even a macro shot.

   One of divers' mottoes is "take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but bubbles." But do divers really leave reefs unharmed? Being a biologist with reef conservation experience made me see my vacations differently. While everyone seems to come to tropical destinations to enjoy water activities, spend time on sunny beaches, and look at colorful fish and corals, I automatically start evaluating reef damage and looking for coral diseases. The last trip to Thailand made me question such things as whether or not conservation biologists are pessimistic in general or is it just me. I also started wondering if it's possible to come to a place without harming its environment, particularly if you are a diver.

Transparent water flea

   Most of small and microscopic invertebrates are transparent and sometimes make you feel that they are made out of glass. That fact makes taking pictures very difficult. In  case of this water flea, which happens to be Simocephalus vetulus, I spent 4 days by Photoshop manually stacking and stitching images and cursing all classes, orders, and families of crustaceans I could recall. No automatic software is capable of accomplishing this insane task. I find the combination of dark backgrounds and polarized light very spectacular for transparent animals in general, and though that at least one object deserved such attention. Hope it was worth it.

Seashell portals

  In my childhood I loved looking closely at seashells being fascinated by the natural shapes, but it never occurred to me to look at them through the microscope. Admittedly, I didn't have such kind of devices back then=) I just came from a trip to Thailand where I spent some time on the least crowded beaches possible to pick up the tiniest shells I could find. After a month of searching I ended up with a small bunch of seashells, out of which I picked fewer than 10. Now I am posting some of the results I've got, but not all yet.

Microscopes vs macro lenses. More pictures of bryozoans and other stuff

   The difference between microscopes and macro lenses is not that significant. The optical principles are the same. What microscopes offer are complex illumination techniques, which can make transparent objects stand out for example, and comfortable systems to focus precisely and move the objects in different directions with a set of screws. In this post I am trying to show how the same object (bryozoan colony Cristatella) looks like under different magnifications and various setups.

Hydras fight for food

   Hydras and daphnias became a "classical" pair of predator and prey model of pond microscopic animals. However, what is often forgotten, hydras tend to aggregate together in high numbers. Usually, the encounter is not like one hydra vs one daphnia. It's a real mess! During warm days it's possible to spot hundreds of these tiny hungry monsters on a single leaf laying underwater. Inevitably, they start competing for food. In this post I'll show how two hydras fight for a single water flea. Unlike in my other posts, the photographs are not made through the microscope. I tried Canon MP-E mounted on 7D for videography purposes, but made lots of stills during my project. May be these pictures will not impress you after previous hydra posts (1,2) but they show natural behavior.

Algae and an ostracod in polarized light

HDR photo of an ostracod next to algae. 

   Some people like animals more than plants. I guess I am one of those guys, but sometimes certain kinds of green things attract my attention. The last time I worked by a microscope I had a chance to test a rented Sony NEX-7 with a new connector and got some interesting results. Green algae, including volvoxes, and an ostracod were the most interesting objects for that day.

Mosquito larva in polarized light once again

  Mosquito seemed to be one of my most successful objects. I took hundreds of shots of that elegant creature shining from inside due to polarized light, but showed only few in my previous post. This monster does not look anything like the annoying winged adult, they peacefully feed on algae and other aquatic stuff, they have to dodge countless predators such as fish and various aquatic larvae of insects that absolutely adore mosquitoes... as snack. Their lives must be extremal hard. And though you probably hate them, I hope these pictures can provoke at least some sympathy towards the insect that you slap on the daily basis. After all, they are a very important component of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems... every time they bite you, they feed the fish that you love... at least as a snack.

Last macro shots of waves

During my trip to the Philippines I took many pictures of waves, I showed most of them already (3, 2, 1). So it's time to post the rest.