David Doubilet’s Nudibranchs- 07.08.08
Nudibranchs ~ i’ve been obsessed with these gorgeous creatures since my first dives as a kid in south east asia. David Doubilet ~ i grew up on his breath taking photography. Combine them ~ and video ~ and National Geographic… and i’ve been swooning over this Nudibranch feature on the National Geographic website for days now. So looking beyond the subject matter for a moment, from a photographic/design perspective… what really struck me about this series of photos, was the process! Seldom do you see these beautiful (tiny) little slug like creatures pop off so vibrantly on a perfectly white background… they look more like supermodels in a photo studio… so watching the video blew my mind to see that David Doubilet and his team actually went diving with a portable studio that they brought TO the nudibranches, shooting them where they found them, and only moving them when they weren’t doing any complicated nudibranch activities (mating, feeding, etc). See the full gallery here, and see some of my favorites as well as the set up they used on the next page!
note to Bart.. yeah I agree with you.. He’s disturbing the nudis …
but then again he could have taken the nudis home put it in the tank (with the light boxes) and photographed the whole scene and release the nudi (hopefully not into trash can.
But no !! he took the elaborate task of bringing the whole “studio” underwater !!
PS: btw nudi is pretty abundance.
----- pandu 10.06.10 23:04