Barrel Of Fun

Technique: A 15 mm Nikon "Fisheye" lens on a Nikonis III Camera was used to take this photo. The strobe was held centered over my head and down approximately 3' from the sponge. Aim of flash was aided by a modeling light. Strobe was fired on high power. Camera was approximately 18" to 24" from subject near the base aimed at a slight, upward angle to allow the surface light to contribute to the composition. Film used was Kodak Kodachrome 64 ASA.

Summary: This huge barrel sponge measures about 4-5 feet tall in real life. Photo was taken off the Bahamian Island of Rum Cay, the second island Columbus landed on when he discovered the Americas.

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Barrel Sponge | Rum Cay, Bahamas

Sponge life in the Bahamas and Cayman Islands is not that unusual, but the size of this one is. The really large ones are rare. Very few of those are in a surrounding that affords such a beautiful array of “goodies” for photo composition. Those “goodies” being composed of soft gorgonian trees, a branch of fire coral (hard to get away from that stuff), sea fans and leafy algae plants.

There are spots that always seem to stand out in your mind without the aid of your dive log. This is one of those in my case. The site was named Snowfields. Being from the upper Midwest and experiencing the scenery after a freshly fallen snow, this site couldn’t be more appropriately named. Large and small bumps of reef surrounded by absolutely the whitest coral sand in the Bahamas.

I talk about photo composition in one of the blog post, but in this case, due to the nature of this site, you had to work hard to take a bad picture.

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