Sea Turtle

I really like this nighttime shot of a sea turtle, which came down to dumb luck. We were on a night dive off Manuelita, a very small island attached to the Cocos Island, and this turtle swam past us at around 10 feet. Sea turtles swim faster than divers so I had to fin a little to keep up and took blind shots as I was swimming, so no shot set up or composition, so everything was down to dumb luck.

At night setting up a shot is challenging because there is no ambient light, so I have to use my flashlight in my left hand to illuminate the scene, and point and trigger the camera with my right hand. One is usually lucky if the critter being immortalized has not swum away while all this is going on.

This shot was all the more challenging because I was swimming along at the time, so I just took shots blindly.

I did do a lot of post-processing too because there was a lot of ’snow’ in the shot.