This is the beginning of a perfect day. As you can see, the sun on the sand at the bottom of this little surge channel, has made it look like the first snowstorm of winter. Remember when you were a little kid? I remember waking up and looking out the window at the beautiful transformation that had taken place. The snow had been spread like frosting on a cake and on the edges of the barn and the top of the corncrib the icicles made a lacy edging that sparkled like diamonds in the sun. There was never a better time than when making the first footprints in the snow and falling backwards to make angels all through the yard. If we got up early enough, the snow muffled the sounds and the world was not only covered with beauty but it was so quiet and peaceful, it almost made you want to whisper so as not to break the spell.
These "snow channels" bring back wonderful memories and contribute to the feeling of going to the most beautiful church service in the world. I have not ever found a place that can compare with this for being close to God. Can you imagine anyone who is as lucky as I am??
It was a great weekend..............yesterday one of our normal crew couldn't do a second dive because of some issues with his sinus. He (boy I hope he doesn't read this) did a really great thing and stayed on the boat allowing the rest of us to do an unusual (at least for here) drift dive on the East Reef. Wow.......it was great! Unless you have been fortunate enough to just jump in the water and let the current take you where it will, you cannot imagine the rush. Since we are part of the current, we don't disturb the fishes and such......they pretty much ignore us because we are "just passing through". We started out just about at the Kwaj lodge (see google earth and search on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands) and you will see the Kwaj lodge on the far east side of the Island across the road from the airport. We drifted all the way around the point of the Island and ended up quite far out in the deeeeeeeeep blue. Whew! That is a very interesting feeling. Well, I've rambled enough for one day........thanks to my new friends for dinner and great conversation, I will babysit anytime for a meal.

See the look on this guy's face? It is one that says "what are you looking at and why are you looking at me?" Today in the news it was all about the Brits arresting 18 people who are supposed to be involved in a plot to smuggle explosives aboard and then killing hundreds of innocent people in the name of the "struggle". For those of you who wander by and stop to read some of these posts, let me just say now that if you are offended by someone who advocates the use of atomic weapons on terrorist organizations, then you probably should go on about your business and search somewhere else. Anyone who would advocate the killing of civilians in the name of "God" should be put down like the mad dog that they are. If you cannot tolerate the existence of an idea which is counter to yours then you need to go the way of the DODO bird and the other creatures who were unable to evolve and adapt to life in the 21st century. Perhaps we are now discovering what caused the crusades...........survival is a primal emotion and when threatened by death........we all are apt to do what ever it takes to survive. It would do the nations of the middle-east well to remember that a cornered and wounded animal is the most dangerous of all. To the nation of Iran I would remind you that you are just learning how to make atomic weapons, we know how and in case you have forgotten we have had the will to use them in the past when it was in the best interest of our nation and our people. As soft and softheaded as many of us have become..........there are an awful lot who would not hesitate if our country and our way of life was at stake.

Did you ever notice that about every six month or so some emails make the rounds again? These pictures are from Monday when we were diving on the West Reef and it took me until today to go back and look again and see that I had indeed caught the beauty of the deep blue and the reds. The Black Feather Stars are usually open when we go down because these are at about 125 feet and there is much less light down here. So, what does that have to do with email? Well, I read some emails sent today by my friends from all over the world and because I took a little extra time to really read them (even though they have passed this way before) it was like finding these beautiful pictures once I looked a little more closely. One friend wants me to stop and smell the roses........I really like the big RED roses that burst with smell. Another said that if I would just join them in a prayer for our troops, I would help them face the everyday dangers of that war.............so I said a prayer and hoped for the quick return of our boys and girls who daily risk everything to prove that FREEDOM IS NOT FREE. Yet another sent me a note that has to go to my wife Judy because she is Nanna and will appreciate each and everyone of the little jokes and will probably be unconsciously be shaking her head "Yes" at each and everyone of the little jokes.............So what did all this mean? When you get a note from your friends, look beyond the title and understand that you are special to all those folks or they wouldn't wish you so well. Join them in the shared laughter or bend your knee with them or just pass the good feelings on to someone you know will laugh or smile or cry along with you!

As you can tell from the pictures..............this has been a great couple of days for diving! What you don't see is that we had a veritable avalanche on Tiger Coweries! Between Kim and I we found four of the beauties and they were all alive. Leaving them for others to look at and hopefully to leave also, was really cool.
Yesterday the surge channels and canyons were great and today we saw all kinds of really cool things. Not the least of which was the White Mouthed Eel above. The turtle was on K-5 upright and was not very big but not afraid either. Speaking of K5, the second picture shows that the ship is in a state of collapse. The passage way you are looking at used to be a really nice place to swim through and look for shells. As you can see now, it would be very dangerous to do that. I suppose all the air bubbles over the years from us divers has accelerated the corrosion of the metal and is probably a main contributing factor for the collapse. I don't think the other ships out here a quite this bad because K5 upright is one of the closest wrecks and probably the one who most folks have dived on. It was also one of the ships which burned prior to going down so that may have also contributed to the speedier collapse. More on this as we go along.

The pictures have nothing to do with today. I just like the pictures. Had a very (at least they said they liked the food) nice dinner for new friends, Bill, Lisa, and 5 year old tornado/hurricane Thomas. I did my normal Thai peanut and coconut milk stir fry with shrimp and made up a dozen lumpia to go with the Rice and Shrimp. I thought it was good, and a fair amount of it disappeared so it was deemed a success. I learned how to make "Dump Cake" . Boy is that my kind of cookin'! I wanted to have something that kind of stayed with the island/exotic theme so I used a couple of cans of tropical fruit chunks dumped in the dish, a white cake mix dumped on top about 6 or 8 pats of butter cut and layed on top and some pecans to just add color. I think next time I will use macadamia nuts. Anyway, it was very very good. It required about 45 minutes of baking at 350 but it was great. Time to hit the rack for tomorrow brings a day of diving and having fun in the water. Hope the rain decides to abate for a while and let us have some sunshine for photos.

I think that tonight I figured out one of the reasons that I love playing with the photos I take. I was reading and listening to music using my computer and WINAMP. If you have never turned on the visualizations and watched how the music becomes the colors and the colors become the music then you haven't enjoyed music. I don't particularly care to just listen to music, it doesn't stimulate me or make me remember things that happened when "that particular piece of music" was playing. But I have discovered that I love to watch music. I feel like I can be the music because I can share the way it feels as it moves and changes the colors and shapes. The colors and the rythms that dance to the beat and the tempo of the music are magic.
Now what the hell does that have to do with my photography? It seems like I am like the music, I can shape and mold the colors of the picture..........I can make my minds eye, see what my eye told me was in that scene. The addition and subtraction of light or the absence of light (black?) is really all it is. The colors which are able to leap out of the pictures when released by adding dark or by adding light are amazing. The Anmeone and the fish literally shout to be seen and with the application of light and dark they stand out and become something much more beautiful than they were when they were just a representation of what my eye saw. They became what my mind's eye saw. The trees and the clouds changed from white and green and brown to fantastic shades of gold and black and blue and pinks that only exist when god lights the fires of the sunset and tells the world good night!

I guess the senior moment is over with for the computer. For whatever reason it loaded multiples of the pictures. Not that they are bad pictures but it made it load slowly. I have been away from this for quite a while. Between working quite a bit and trying to get my real pictures mounted and ready to sell, this has just taken a back seat. As you can tell by the pictures, I love to play with the light when I am "developing" my photographs. Some how the beauty that is really in the pictures seems to take a bit of experimentation to bring it out. Of course, I'm probably the only one who sees how extraordinary these become when tweaked. Well, enjoy. I'll be back.

Pictures of the small wreck we found last Friday. I know we aren't the first to find it because of the cable and broken fishing buoy, but it is fun never the less. It is a small boat with only one 3 blade prop. It appears to be about 60' long and was an island supply boat from the looks of it. Lots of small holds. This shell is lying on the starboard side of the ship which is lying on it's port side. For those of you who don't sail, that is right and left respectively. As you can probably tell, the round is still live so I suspect it was dumped overboard by the US Navy somewhere along the line. I don't think Kevin and Kim were real thrilled to pose for me that close! We had fun and used our navigation skills and proved that given enough dives, even an old fart like me can learn to use a compass in the water! LOL! Thanks Jack! The top picture in this series is the projectile of one of these (I think, 5 inch) shells. It is still in the casing so it hasn't been fired but the projectile has been eaten away by years of salt water and all that is left is the bottom half of the projectile and the impact fuse intact but with no explosive to set off. Kind of cool seeing how these thing were made!

Well today started off with a bang! While we (Kevin, Kim, and I) were getting ready to pull out of the marina, our Marine Patrol boat came in and said there was a ray caught up in some buoy lines out by Emon beach. Since we were the closest to being ready to pull out we went and went in the water and between Kevin and I we were able to cut the poly-rope and set the Manta free! What a great way to start the day. This isn't a picture of the the same Manta but it is about the same size so I thought I would throw it in so everyone could see what I was talking about. It looked like the Manta went through a loop in the line with the right mandible (hanging down) and just got frightened and looped itself all up. Like I said, great way to start the day!

Even though they are pretty funky pictures, I decided to put a couple of the wreck we saw on Friday afternoon up here. We are going to try to get a little closer tomorrow so we have more time on the wreck itself and see if we can't do a better job of figuring out if it is Japanese or American and if it was bombed or what caused it to sink. We might even be able to figure out what the cargo was if we are lucky. I was pretty surprised by the fact that my "available light" picture came out as well as it did. Stay tuned for more.......................

What a cool day! I was looking at some imagery a couple of days ago on Google Earth and when I zoomed in on the lagoon I saw something on the bottom that didn't look exactly like it was natural. Naturally, I had to investigate. We dove from G-Buoy Coral head this afternoon after work and found a wreck i didn't know was there! How cool is that? I'm simply facinated by the fact that I can use Google Earth to potentially find ships...........odds are not good because we were only at 75 ft and I don't think we could have seen it much deeper but it worked this time.

Here we go again. Color and mystery is far more beautiful to me than just another picture of a fish in the water. Don't get me wrong, I've got lots of beautiful pictures of fish, but these are much more like what I would like to hang on my wall.
We are about to lose a good friend back to the real world. He is going to go from the beauty and peace of a small island in the middle of the Pacific , to a military installation in the middle of the United States. I wish him well and hope that he will avail himself of this site to see the sights and creatures he will soon be missing. Adios my friend.

I am heading back to Honolulu to pick my wife up and bring her back out here for Diving over the 4th of July. She wants to see how we celebrate out here and if it is any different than back on Oahu. I'll say it is! I suppose that the 2 minute traffic jam of bicycles trying to leave the beach after the fireworks is not going to impress her much but I bet the bikes that she sees during the day when we celebrate will sure do the trick. Here, see what I mean. If you have ever lived in Europe you might be used to riding a bicycle, but most folks out here haven't ridden much since they were kids and it shows sometimes! LOL!

Here we are 2 weeks after my last post and I have tried to decide whether people want to see "colors" and compositon or is it the fish they are after? Pictures like the one on the left is very interesting and beautiful to me because of the things that you only see under very specific circumstances! The hairs that reflect the blue light from the surrounding water is only visible when the sun is backlighting the coral. What a revelation! We divers mostly cruise along taking the corals for granted........after all, they are beautiful without working to look at if from another angle! Boy, this photography thing sure makes pictures beautiful! LOL........

Can you imagine a more beautiful landscape than this? I sometimes wonder what it was that I did right, to be so blessed. I have a great job located in the world's best diving area, I've got a great wife who supports what I do, and I can take and look at great pictures and share them with a huge share of the world. At the same time, I'm listening to the Blue Man Group, one of my favorites. Life is really good.
I got an email this evening from my wife telling me about a new place on the net called Panorama Explorer. It is based on Google Maps and is really cool. Yet another place to put pictures on the WWW. There must be literally millions all over the globe. Can you imagine the compilation that would make???

One of Judy's favorite pictures........it never ceases to amaze me that in the world of water where everything is blue these colors exist. It is really exciting to see exactly what my camera has captured at the end of diving.

Well with some trepidation we decided to give a go at making all my pictures pay for themselves. My wife and I just started a new venture called In-Depth Photography. It is already proving to be a difficult thing trying to run it from two different places in the world. The picture at the left shows the advanced state of decay of some of the wrecks at Kwajalein and is one of the reasons I want to share with the world my pictures. These views of 60 year old ships are soon to be lost due to the extreme degree of degradation of these old hulks. They were sent to the bottom of the sea violently and the ravages of the sea are slowly but surely destroying the remains. In the not to distant future these and photos like these may be the only records available.

Yesterday was the first time for quite a while that we were able to get out and dive on the East Reef. The visibility was great but there were no sharks to be seen. Very unusual since we normally get great up-close encounters with Grey Reefs and White Tip Sharks. We did see a couple of Barracudda and a spotted Eagle Ray to make it something other than a bubble blowing trip. Well, maybe today!

What a great day today was! Little things like this shrimp on a "Leather Anemone" the baby "Lion Fish" and the "Emperor Angel" made for great dives!
I just took my wife back to Hawaii, she was here for a dive vacation and will be working hard to make another trip soon. Our really good friends were here too and I will get some pictures up from their trip soon.

This is the stern and wheel of a ship that is up North of us here on Kwajalein. The name is the Palapalawan and is one of the most beautiful wrecks we have to dive on out here.
She sits on a white sand bottom and is at the very limit of the recreational dive limit of 130 Ft. We don't get a lot of time on her because of the depth but when we have a full sky of sunshine, the pictures are exceptional. This ship had a full wood deck but the worms have eaten it all away and left nothing but the metal skeleton. Lots of Black Coral bushes and baby fish by the millions. A favorite dive!

Musings about diving in and around Kwajalein Atoll

I'm headed for Honolulu tomorrow! Going to pick-up my wife and come back out to Kwajalein for Diving and vacation all week. I also have two really good friends coming to Dive with us next week and we are going to have a ball. I hope to be able to include some new pictures of the crew while they are here relaxing and having a good time. While in Honolulu I have to bid farewell to a great friend who is retiring from the Navy after 23 or 24 years and returning to the Mainland to get on with their lives. I plan to have them to our house for dinner and make Thai food that everyone seems to enjoy. Not that I am such a great cook but the wife has to work and she likes my cooking so..................
More in the saga as the days go by.

I decided to play with the software I got from Breezesystems for converting my RAW format Canon pictures. Some folks might not like the result but I find them very interesting.

These Anemones appear to be lighted from the inside and that is part of what I find fascinating about photography.

Wreck diving on a 60 year old WWII ship is sobering. The destructive forces that put this ship on the bottom are still evident. The sea is slowly but surely claiming it.

Finding yourself in a cloud of Jellyfish is daunting at first and then discovering they don't seem to sting, makes taking pictures a pleasure.

Simply amazing the variety of beautiful things you find in the Ocean. A couple of hours underwater on the weekends is enough to recharge anyone for the following week. Try it, better than drugs!

Diving World

If you are a geeky kind of folk, or if you just want to get some of the best advice for keeping your computer running, then click on the link to Fred Langa's list on the right.

Beautiful Feather Star on Coral

Diving World

I would appreciate any Underwater Pictures you would care to post. Please watermark them or use low resolution pictures since I cannot stop folks from downloading for their own use.

I find the Feather Stars to be a beautiful creature! At 100 ft. with dark blue water surrounding you it is an experience that cannot be described but must be experienced! If you have the opportunity, learn to SCUBA dive.
Diving World

Nice shark pictures!

Well, not many comments yet. I suppose one of these days other folks will find the place. This is a Red Carpet Anemone in its Pink stage. Just thought the little crab that came out from under it was interesting.

Great day for diving..........even the sharks cooperated.