Honorable Mention Novice DSLR

Edoardo Errani

"Mimetism"

Edoardo won a $100 gift certificate from Bluewater Photo or Bluewater Travel

The Story:  I shot this image in Raja Ampat at Cape Gam dive spot in September and I have been shooting by a reflex camera for one year.

When my guide indicated me this wire coral crab, I was immediately surprised by its perfect mimetism and by the polyps which had grown up on its carapace.

It was the first time I saw this subject and it looked me nearly like an alien!

The main difficult for me during the shots was to maintain a good neutral buoyancy in order to not touch the wire coral with the strobes and the lens of my housing.

I did some shots with the black background, but because behind the subject there was the water and not the wall of the reef, I tried also some shots with a time of exposure sufficiently long to obtain a blue background in order to have in the same photo two complementary colors, the blue of the water and the orange of the crab.

I shot about twenty images and this one is the nearest to my idea.

Location:  Raja Ampat, Indonesia

Camera:  Nikon D700 and Nikon 105mm Macro Lens (F25, 1/30, ISO 200) with EasyDive LEO II Housing and Dual Sea & Sea YS-D1 Strobes.

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