Under the sea in Dos Palmas
March 5, 2006 | 12:00am
Underwater and nature photography are two hobbies I have come across recently. I am a professional photographer who shoots mostly industrial and business subjects, as well as architecture for magazines, hotels and resorts.
As a kid, my love and passion was nature. I would spend hours and hours going over hundreds of National Geographic magazines, marveling at the places and sights I thought I’d never have the opportunity to see – until very recently.
I was doing a series of photographs for Dos Palmas Arrecife Island Resort in Palawan when I discovered that its main attraction is the bountiful nature the island is home to.
I found myself crawling on my belly in the bushes at 5 a.m. to capture elusive bird shots, or scanning the horizon from a banca looking for the great schools of spinner dolphins that accompany fishermen on their morning run, or sticking my head in a small crevasse underwater to catch a glimpse of a sleeping leopard shark.
It was perhaps a year or two, when I first saw Bob. I was perhaps 30 feet underwater on a coral knoll called Helen’s Garden directly in front of Dos Palmas Arreceffi Island Resort. I was led by my dive master to a large assemblage of powder blue sponge fishes standing stiffly like some strange tubular cactus on the reef slope. My eyes traveled up and down along the spongy surface to a knot roughly at the base of the sponge. I swam closer. And then it happened. The rough shape at the base of the sponge yawned.
And what a yawn it was. This was Bob, my first frog fish. Grotesquely shaped, squat and most definitely unfish-like, the frog fish sat at the base of the sponges whose color it had mimicked as a camouflage. Its mouth at full yawn was almost as big as the rest of its body, large enough to vacuum in any unwary victim that responds to the lure it held over its mouth, an appendage of loose skin suspended from what can only be described as a fishing rod. The fish sat completely still, perhaps thinking – no, hoping-that I hadn’t seen it. I adjusted my strobe lights, held the camera up to around 12-inches from its magnificent muppet monster-like face, and took the first of a series of many portrait shots. I captured Bob in all his serene motionless ugliness – his face, his paddle-like feet that he used to waddle like a duck along the sponge’s surface, and the jet exhaust at the base of his fins that he used for an extra boost.
My encounter with Bob was just one of the many little encounters that I was privileged to experience on this rich little reef called Helen’s Garden off Dos Palmas in Honda Bay, Palawan.
I was in a nature photographers’ nirvana. And what a thrill it was! I was once stalking a tabon bird in the undergrowth of the mangrove forest at the back of the island. I stayed prone for quite a while, waiting for the perfect angle, but the birds had another route in mind and passed elsewhere. Standing up, I found to my horror that I was lying on a tiny scorpion.
Nature photography does have its ups and downs. Often I find myself set up for a particular shot when suddenly, a completely different opportunity for which I wasn’t prepared for arises, like being set up for an afternoon of underwater photography on a dive boat only to have a school of dolphins leaping playfully not far from the chase boat’s front and my SLR camera nowhere to be found.
The missed opportunities are all part of the hunt, making the process of capturing that perfect photograph all the more thrilling.
I certainly wouldn’t mind spending summer in Dos Palmas to be able to practice what I love most – nature photography. The island does not run out of opportunities for nature photographers and it is not difficult to fall in love with the place and want to keep coming back for more. Among the many sights the nature photographer can capture are the many endemic and migratory bird species that make the island their home, marine turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs, juvenile blacktip reef sharks swimming in the mangrove forest, four different species of clownfish, many types of surgeonfish and tangs, parrot fish, groupers, leopard and nurse sharks.
Oh and let’s not forget – frog fish, like Bob.
As a kid, my love and passion was nature. I would spend hours and hours going over hundreds of National Geographic magazines, marveling at the places and sights I thought I’d never have the opportunity to see – until very recently.
I was doing a series of photographs for Dos Palmas Arrecife Island Resort in Palawan when I discovered that its main attraction is the bountiful nature the island is home to.
I found myself crawling on my belly in the bushes at 5 a.m. to capture elusive bird shots, or scanning the horizon from a banca looking for the great schools of spinner dolphins that accompany fishermen on their morning run, or sticking my head in a small crevasse underwater to catch a glimpse of a sleeping leopard shark.
It was perhaps a year or two, when I first saw Bob. I was perhaps 30 feet underwater on a coral knoll called Helen’s Garden directly in front of Dos Palmas Arreceffi Island Resort. I was led by my dive master to a large assemblage of powder blue sponge fishes standing stiffly like some strange tubular cactus on the reef slope. My eyes traveled up and down along the spongy surface to a knot roughly at the base of the sponge. I swam closer. And then it happened. The rough shape at the base of the sponge yawned.
And what a yawn it was. This was Bob, my first frog fish. Grotesquely shaped, squat and most definitely unfish-like, the frog fish sat at the base of the sponges whose color it had mimicked as a camouflage. Its mouth at full yawn was almost as big as the rest of its body, large enough to vacuum in any unwary victim that responds to the lure it held over its mouth, an appendage of loose skin suspended from what can only be described as a fishing rod. The fish sat completely still, perhaps thinking – no, hoping-that I hadn’t seen it. I adjusted my strobe lights, held the camera up to around 12-inches from its magnificent muppet monster-like face, and took the first of a series of many portrait shots. I captured Bob in all his serene motionless ugliness – his face, his paddle-like feet that he used to waddle like a duck along the sponge’s surface, and the jet exhaust at the base of his fins that he used for an extra boost.
My encounter with Bob was just one of the many little encounters that I was privileged to experience on this rich little reef called Helen’s Garden off Dos Palmas in Honda Bay, Palawan.
I was in a nature photographers’ nirvana. And what a thrill it was! I was once stalking a tabon bird in the undergrowth of the mangrove forest at the back of the island. I stayed prone for quite a while, waiting for the perfect angle, but the birds had another route in mind and passed elsewhere. Standing up, I found to my horror that I was lying on a tiny scorpion.
Nature photography does have its ups and downs. Often I find myself set up for a particular shot when suddenly, a completely different opportunity for which I wasn’t prepared for arises, like being set up for an afternoon of underwater photography on a dive boat only to have a school of dolphins leaping playfully not far from the chase boat’s front and my SLR camera nowhere to be found.
The missed opportunities are all part of the hunt, making the process of capturing that perfect photograph all the more thrilling.
I certainly wouldn’t mind spending summer in Dos Palmas to be able to practice what I love most – nature photography. The island does not run out of opportunities for nature photographers and it is not difficult to fall in love with the place and want to keep coming back for more. Among the many sights the nature photographer can capture are the many endemic and migratory bird species that make the island their home, marine turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs, juvenile blacktip reef sharks swimming in the mangrove forest, four different species of clownfish, many types of surgeonfish and tangs, parrot fish, groupers, leopard and nurse sharks.
Oh and let’s not forget – frog fish, like Bob.
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