Puerto Galera, Philippines

As many of you will already know, the waters of Puerto Galera are famous for dive sites with amazing opportunities for macro photography (close-up, usually very small subjects). In this guide we aim to provide you with some helpful advice on the preparation for, and shooting of, excellent underwater macro shots.

Choosing your macro subject

Before you even get in the water, you should do some research about how to plan getting some great macros. Talk to some of the dive guides about which sites may provide you with the best opportunities. What sort of depth are these sites at? What kind of current and visibility can you expect? See if it’s possible to see some photographs already taken at these sites, and get some idea of what subjects are producing the best results. If you already have some idea of what sort of lighting and composition works best, your task will be far easier when you encounter the subject you wish to photograph.

Once you enter the water, you should have an idea of what it is you are looking for, and in what sort of habitats to be looking. Should another photographer already be shooting something you want to photograph, remember your manners, and keep some distance away and take care not to stir up any silt. If you can get in the photographer’s line of sight he/she will know you are interested in photographing that subject.

When to Shoot

Once you have found a subject you wish to shoot, you need to think about the composition and the moment at which you want to shoot. Take a moment to observe your subject to see if it is exhibiting any behaviour. Will it change position/posture/colour? Is is likely to ambush another animal? I little bit of patience while observing your subject will pay off great dividends if you know when will be the best moment to capture your image.

Composition, Lighting, and Focus

There are 6 things to keep in mind when looking for that perfect macro shot: Composition, Lighting,  Background, Focus, Exposure and Depth of Field.

• Composition
  Try to get as low as possible without stirring up silt, and start evaluating different compositions. Do you want a head-on shot? Full frame? Diagonal? Or even from underneath? Getting a good composition can often be the most difficult part; not only will you need to decide on which angle has the most aesthetic appeal, but your skills as a diver will also be put to the test. Controlling your body position and buoyancy is crucial. No hanging onto reefs!

• Lighting (Strobe position)
  Think about your strobe position based on the texture of the subject, and the water visibility. What lighting is going to produce the best results?  Front, side or back lighting? Do you need to worry about backscatter (strobe light reflecting on particles in the water, causing ‘orbs’) Do you want  to position your strobes for a black background? Most macro photographers will have diffusers on their strobes,  giving the light a softer look that looks often looks better in macros.

• Background
  Your background can make or break your shot. Think about the colour: Black, blue or green? Do you want it in focus or blurred? Is there an interesting object nearby that can be incorporated in the background? Is it possible  to carefully move the subject to a better background without stressing the subject? Sometimes a lembeh stick can be used to carefully reposition crabs or shrimps. Don’t use your dive gloves, they may injure or stick to the subject. Do not risk injuring a subject or causing it to flee its habitat just to get the shot you want.

• Focus
  Usually you will want to focus on the eyes or rhinophores. Lock the  focus on them and recompose your shot. If your housing/camera allows it, you may wish to switch to a continuous focusing mode, which will allow you to shoot without the camera “locking” focus. This can be very helpful when shooting supermacro, especially if you or your subject are moving.

• Exposure
  You will need to check your display and/or histogram to ensure a proper exposure. If you are using a TTL Converter (automatically sets the exposure of your strobes when they fire) you will almost always have a proper exposure, but sometimes you may need to adjust it up or down. If you are shooting manual, you’ll adjust your strobe power up or down. A TTL converter is a big help in shooting macro, and you really won’t need to worry about exposure most of the time. Shooting macro without a TTL can be a big disadvantage.

• Depth of Field
  Closely related to the background;  How much DOF do you need, or want, for the composition you have chosen? Do you want a blurred or sharp background? Is the ambient light so strong I need a small aperture to help block it out? (Common in clear, shallow water at mid-day). All these factors will help you determine the proper f-stop to use for the shot.  Remember – there is no best F-stop for macro photography. A large aperture (small f-stop) will blur the background, and a small aperture will bring more of the background into focus.

After The Shot

If there is another photographer waiting for the subject, show them exactly where the subject is before leaving the scene. Be careful that you don’t loose the location of a subject; you can plant your lembeh stick next to the subject, so you can retrieve another photographer and bring them to the exact location. Your lembeh stick can also be used to stick in the ground when a current is sweeping you towards another dive taking a photograph. This way you can stay out of the way without kicking up silt.

We hope you found this article useful and informative. Feel free to leave any comments or questions below.

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We would like to thank all of the MAD team, and especially Alex Siegel for organizing what turned out to be an Awesome weekend of diving at Blue Ribbon Dive Resort.

MAD (Manila Aqua Divers) is a diving group of mainly Manila expats living in Manila, that all share the love for diving. We here at Blue Ribbon Dive Resort have had the pleasure of diving with quite a few of its members before, yet this was the first true MAD organized trip.

MAD arrived early on the morning of the 21st Jan, all eager to get back in the water. On the first day we dove at Dungon Wall, Alma Jane, Dalaruan Wrecks then Giant Clams as a night dive.

Due to the colder waters at the moment (down from 30 degrees Celsius to around 26 degrees at present), a lot more critters seem to come up from the cooler water. Flamboyant Cuttlefish seem to be in abundance at the moment. Marco our new Instructor who had only ever seen 4 in his life, managed to find 2 on one dive at Sabang Wrecks. We also had a lot of pipefish, such as the Ornate and the Robust Ghost Pipefish.

There are lots more great photos, so be sure to read the whole article!
In the evening we enjoyed the ‘MAD Buffet’, a selection of our dishes served at our International Restaurant. Everyone had quite an early night after the talking of the day’s dives.

The second day, we all went to Verde Island. The sky was blue with only a few clouds on the horizon. Verde was epic. Visibility of around 30-40m, on the wall side of the ‘Drop Off’ it was Nudibranch galore, along with a school of Jacks seeming to attack a very large Octopus. On our second dive, the volcanic activity was very visible, with bubbles of gas streaming from the ocean floor from about 20m to 25m. After we came up shallow towards the wall, we found shoals of Barracuda, Trevallies, Jacks & Sweetlips, along with the schools of Redtooth Triggerfish that are in their thousands at Verde.

Then we headed to the Sawang Beach Camp, where we found our BBQ readily cooked for us. We ate, refreshed ourselves, then left for our last dive.

We headed over to ‘The Washing Machine’ . No surface current, and no signs that the washing machine was ‘on’. So we all jumped in and had a slow drift dive towards the mini canyons. It then, as can happen at Verde, picked up quite quickly, and gave us all a bit of an exhilarating dive. Alex before the dive had told me he’d never seen the current strong at the Washing Machine. This time we all did!

We headed home, and the few of us that still could handle meat after the BBQ, had an English Roast at Blue Ribbon, while others had Pizza.

On the Monday, we did a couple of dives. Hole in the Wall, a drift dive where you often see schools of Giant Trevallies and sometimes Tuna hunting in the current, and then back to Dalaruan Wrecks for one final muck dive.

It was a great weekend, and was a pleasure having MAD diving with us.

Thank you all for coming.

Jon and the entire Blue Ribbon Team

Thanks to everyone who joined us at the Blue Ribbon Dive Resort to celebrate the ringing in of the New Year!

It was a great night: Good food, good friends and much drinking, dancing and merry making, as well the fabulous fire dancers and fireworks display.

We would like to wish all our friends and family all the best for a prosperous 2012, and we hope to see you all again soon.

Come and join us at Blue Ribbon Dive Resort for a New Years Eve dinner and celebration!

We have a delicious roast dinner at only P550 per head, and the night’s entertainment includes live music, fire dancers and fireworks. It promises to be a night to remember!

We hope to see you there.

Blue Ribbon Dive Resort has just been upgraded by PADI to a 5 Star Resort. Even though we were only a PADI resort for a little under a year, PADI has recognised our continuous mission to be the most professional yet also fun dive resort on the beach.

This is only the beginning though, hopefully within a year, we will be training up Instructors as well at our resort. Blue Ribbon Dive Resort has already trained a lot of Divemasters,, it seems like this should be the natural progression. Blue Ribbon Dive Resort will be the place in Puerto Galera to get your professional diving credentials.

Watch this space.

Come on down to Blue Ribbon Dive Resort any night of the week and enjoy our easy listening live music.

This a totally new experience, where the underwater world gets transformed into an alien landscape. You typically only Fluo Dive at night, so that you are not missing out on the vast majority of Fluorescenct corals and organisms.

What is fluorescence?

Fluorescence is the name for the absorption of light at one wavelength and its re-emission at another wavelength. What that boils down to is that some things will glow when you shine the right light on them. The ‘right light’ can be different for different targets. We are most used to seeing fluorescence produced by ultraviolet light, often called ‘black light’ because we humans can’t see it. At Blue Ribbon Dive Resort we deal with specially filtered blue lights, because the blue has proved to be better at making most things underwater fluoresce.

Fluorescence is kind of magical. You point one light at a target and a totally different color comes out. One of the characteristics of fluorescence is the intense, highly saturated colors. We are used to seeing things illuminated by white light, which contains all the colors of the spectrum. When something fluoresces it usually emits only a narrow range of colors, making it appear like a pure color.

There are fluorescent items around you all the time. Highlighter pens, orange traffic cones and safety vests, and bright plastics for children’s toys are just a few examples of the way fluorescence is used. The fluorescence of these products is what makes them appear especially bright. Just shine your NightSea light around you and see what lights up!

I’ve seen things glow when I dive at night. Is that fluorescence?

Just about everyone who has dived at night has seen little flashing lights in the water. Usually this comes from single-celled organisms, called dinoflagellates, but there are a number of marine critters that can make their own glow. They produce light by a chemical reaction called bioluminescence, the same way that fireflies light up. Most emit light when physically disturbed, and the motion of your body through the water can set them off.

Bioluminescence and fluorescence are both forms of luminescence. A big difference between them is that for fluorescence you have to stimulate the glow by shining a light on the subject, while for bioluminescence everything needed to glow is already contained in the organism. The corals and other subjects pictured on this web site are not bioluminescent, and you need to use the right light to make them fluoresce.

What can you expect to see on a Blue Ribbon Fluo-Dive?

Not everything fluoresces, but fluorescence is everywhere. When you dive with lights to excite fluorescence you will be working in the dark. As you move the beam around you will often see nothing, but suddenly something will light up. It might be a coral or anemone, a shrimp or a nudibranch, a tunicate or a bristleworm. Or it might be a new fluorescence that has never been described before.

Some things will fluoresce brightly and you will be able to spot them from a distance. Others will not fluoresce as strongly and you will need to get up close to them. And still others will not respond at all.

Sometimes all of an organism fluoresces with one color, sometimes there are mixed colors and intensities. Sometimes only a small part of a creature fluoresces and you have to turn on your white light to find out what you are looking at. Some dives may be disappointing, while others will be rich in new observations. You will be looking for something that has not been explored in detail, and you will be helping to add to our store of knowledge on the subject.

Do you have to dive at night to see fluorescence?

Not necessarily, but if you don’t you will be missing a lot. As far back as the 1950′s divers noticed that some corals and anemones either appeared very bright or had colors that should have been impossible. Water absorbs reds and oranges first, and at 60 feet (20 meters) there shouldn’t be orange corals, but there are. The corals are absorbing ultraviolet and blue light and turning it into orange.

But the corals that fluoresce in daylight are just a small minority. Many specimens that look completely ordinary in daylight or when illuminated with a normal dive light will light up with remarkable colors when you shine the NightSea lights on them. In some cases some individuals will fluoresce brightly, while other specimens of the same species won’t react at all. The reasons for this kind of variation aren’t known yet.

If you try to use lights to stimulate fluorescence in the daytime the results will be disappointing. Fluorescence is a weak effect and the ambient light will usually overwhelm it. You will have some success if you look under overhangs, inside crevices, or other dim places, but to see fluorescence in its best light you should dive at night.

Please contact us if you have any questions

We’d like to thank everyone who made it to our Halloween Party, and made it such a special night. Halloween was also our unofficial launch party, and it went down very well. Keeping everybody entertained during the evening, we had Fire Dancers and a live band,as well as a BBQ Buffet, a fancy dress competition and a raffle!

We had a brilliant time, and since the music went down so well that night, we will now be starting music every week. If that goes down we will have live music every night!

Here are some of the pictures from the night. They were a from a selection of thousands.

Hope you enjoy!

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The Blue Ribbon team is pleased to announce that we have recently completed the renovations to all our bungalows and apartments. The rooms have all been repainted and equipped with brand new furniture and fittings, and include a minibar, air conditioning, personal safe, hot and cold water and cable TV. We also have bungalows available with fully equipped kitchens.

The rooms are all situated at the back of the resort, in our lush tropical gardens and are only metres away from the clear waters of the bay.

Book your Philippines diving vacation with us and enjoy our high standard of accommodation whist still enjoying our budget rates.

Click here for more information on rooms and rates at the Blue Ribbon Dive Resort in Puerto Galera