Houston's Premier Scuba and Dive Shop Oceanic Ventures Inc.

(713) 523-3483 (dive)
5808 Newcastle Drive
Houston, TX 77401

Wreck Diving

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Andrew Trent Speaks at Club Aquarius

Drew Trent and Ann Keibler

What a fun presentation Drew Trent, Vice President of Oceaneering’s Engineered Solutions Group, made at our Club Meeting last evening. It was a full house at the Black Labrador with no vacant seats available. For those of you who were not there, Drew spoke about a variety of topics including what his group does and their particiation in the BP incident in the Gulf. While he did not give a lot of particulars, he did talk about things his group and the ROV group did to help coordinate and bring a positive conclusion to that incident.

 Of course, Drew also talked about his past life as a saturation diver in the North sea and his love of diving and sailing. He had photographs from these adventures as well as his early courses with Oceanic Ventures. He even recounted how a mixed gas dive supervisor was forced to take a series of diving courses beginning with the Principles of Technical diving through Trimix.

 It was fun getting together with so many people to talk about diving and to have such an entertaining speaker. You can see photographs from the event by clicking here.

 Don’t forget to put next month’s meeting on your calendar (23 February 2012). The topic is From the Highlands to the Islands – A Scotch Tasting Event .

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New Truk Lagoon Dive Video Debut at Club Aquarius Meeting

Photo of Wreck in Chuuk
Inside Wreck Looking Out
Drew Trent, our scheduled speaker for our monthly Club Aquarius meeting was sick.  But, don’t worry, he has agreed to reschedule his presentation later in the year.
But as they say in show business, the show must go on.  I debuted a new video compilation of his photographs from past trips to Truk Lagoon.  The video featured photographs of the ships before the blast and then ones from the bottom.  It also had photographs of a number of the people that have joined me on previous trips. 
It was a fun video to put together and was well received by the audience.  If you missed the video, I posted it so you can see it.

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Preplanning a Scuba Diving Silhouette Photograph

Photograph by Eric Keibler - Penetration

Penetration

© Eric V. Keibler

Here is a natural light photograph taken in a cargo hold in Truk Lagoon.  While the shot may look completely natural, it was set-up prior to getting in the water.  Todd Emons and I decided to go in the water together to take some photographs of one another in various locations on the ship.

Todd works on the Odyssey so he is very familiar with the wrecks and had some ideas of what shots might look good in this wreck. This type of local knowledge helps you to capture photographs that you might otherwise miss.  Of course, you still have to do everything to take the image but setting up the shot can make things easier.  You need to discuss the general sight and then make a plan with your dive buddy.  It is easier to discuss what you want to do on the surface rather than underwater.  Working with a model can be quite challenging underwater and having a plan before you go in makes it much simplier.

To take this shot, I swam to the lower portion of the cargo hold.  While getting in position, it was important not to kick up the bottom or dislodge too much debris from the ceiling because the debris would ruin the shot.  I set the camera on manual and set the camera to properly capture the blue light throwing everything else into shadows.  After everything was set, I signaled Todd who was perched at the lip of the hold and he began to swim toward the camera being careful not to shine his light in the direction of the camera.  You can see just a small beam coming from the light but because the hold was so large, and the backlight so strong, his light had little effect in the final image.

Also notice that while Todd is the subject of the shot, he is not in the center of the image but rather is in the top third of the picture.  In general, it is more pleasing to the eye if the subject is not centered but rather offset into another quadrant.  We call this division the rule of thirds which is a compositional tool.  Look for a better discussion of this “Rule” in another post on composition.

Remember, when taking silhouette shots, it is important to make sure that you keep the meter reading set for the backlight and not let the camera adjust to the target swimming towards you. 

Camera Specifications: Canon 5D, fitted with a 17mm-40mm lens at 20mm, f4.0 at 1/25 sec, ISO 640

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Wreck diving in Florida

I have just dropped Pam and Bob off at the airport after returning 4 sets of twins and 14 stage bottles back to Fill Express.  This brings to a close another Technical Wreck diving trip to Florida. 
Pam Radford, Terry deWolf, Kelly Plato, Bob Sloan, Dave Snyder and Geoff Streitel, joined me for this wreck diving weekend.  We started diving on Friday with the Hydro Atlantic and ended on Sunday with the R.B. Johnson.  We had some great dives and and saw some big fish.  Terry saw a bull shark on the R.B. Johnson and we all saw a BIG turtle on the Lowrance.
Of course the trip started with a challenge — Capt. Oliver blew an engine and our plan was put into a bit of a tailspin.  But thanks to a little help from some friends (thanks Oliver and Mark), I was able to do a fast shuffle and set-up the diving with another operator.  Jeff and Suzanne rearranged some of their diving and found us boats and let us pick the dive sites.  They helped make the trip a success; and, their large boats were a treat!
We also set-up a few dives with Capt. Conrad who took our group out to the R. B. Johnson. 
The diving in the Ft Lauderdale area is primarily on artificial reefs — i.e. sunken ships.  Florida has been very aggressive in creating artificial reefs for fishing and diving.  The resulting dive sites are varied both in design and depth.  They offer something to almost every diver.  There are also some natural reefs but I have yet to dive them (too much wreck diving).
Thanks everyone for a fun trip and some great dives!