Sunday 22 March 2015

Svanemøllen Strand

A cold winters morning in february, I finally pulled myself together, packed my scuba gear into the car and went out to Svanemøllen Strand in Copenhagen. The water temperature is only 4ºC...pretty darn cold if you ask me... which means time to look for nudibranches. Actually, I´ve never stumbled upon any nudies in Scandinavia before - I was not aware that you´ve gotta look for them during winter time.

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So I set out with my Canon 7d, and for the first time I tried the 60mm macro lens in the Hugyfot underwater housing. Firing a few test shots on the mussels (Mytilus edulis) to adjust the settings and flash from the Inon Z-240 flash, I soon got carried away by the beauty of the nitty-gritty details that are found on the pier just 2m below the surface.


All images were taken with 1/250sek; F/13 and ISO 320. Strobe power varied from around 1/4-1/2 of max output.


Barnacles were my next challenge. They are found everywhere but capturing their filtering movements in a sharp shot was not to easy for me. Luckily I´m a sucker for the autofocus on the 7d, and it didn´t let me down this time either.


I could not believe what I saw through my mask: Just after 10 minutes of diving - still no more than a meter away from the pier, I spottet my beloved nudibranch. Without sounding to nerdy, this was just more than I could ask for.



This little fellow did such a good job posing, while I tried to ignore the flounder and shrimps that tried to get my attention meanwhile.

After 40 minutes it was time to say goodbye and head up for a warm cup of coffe..after checking out this sea snail below...