While in Belize a couple of years ago, we spent some of our trip on the island of Caye Caulker. This was an awesome vacation spot.  We were staying at a hotel located on the Western edge of the tiny island which meant that each evening we were treated to a sunset stretching to the mainland of Belize.

Near our hotel there was a group of pelicans that hung out on a dock and some old posts and often as we sat lazily by the water we would watch their antics.  It was fun to see the dynamics play out as new birds flew in displacing already-settled birds, much posturing, arguing, and eventual disgruntled adjustments ensued until the group re-settled with its new pecking order.

I took this photo one evening, as the sun was descending on the horizon but well before the actual sunset. Shooting towards the harsh sun like this I knew I’d lose a lot of the colors and would end up with mostly silhouetted figures.  I liked the way each bird has its own position and we’re basically peeking through the trees.

A shallow enough depth of field helped blur the foreground trees and structure on the left to better draw attention to the birds.

While framing up the shot, I loved the way the sun shining on the water created an almost overbearing presence in the background.  Ultimately the detail in the sun got washed away but I knew that would be the case and I intentionally allowed that to blow out as another way to keep the birds as the primary focal point of the image.

At the end of the day, there’s just something incredibly tropical feeling about this image, even though it’s not the typical crystal clear water and sky with palm trees and sand.  It makes me want to escape the rain and head back to Belize.

Last year Meghan and I took off for a couple of weeks to Belize.  It was an awesome trip.

On one of our days on Caye Caulker we went snorkeling and I took the opportunity to test out my underwater housing that I bought for my large point-and-shoot Canon G7.  I purchased the underwater housing from B&H as a bit of a test – underwater photography was something that I had been interested in for a while – and after the last couple of trips to Thailand where the snorkeling was amazing, I was really intrigued.

The set up worked pretty well.  I opted for a cheaper housing, which is basically just a really robust ziplock with a rigid front for the lens.  As such the controls were pretty hard to use  once underwater – so set it before the camera goes in the bag.

This is one of my favorite photos from the day.  After shooting a few fish and coral bits, I saw this image of folks from another snorkeling outfit listening to instructions from their dive master.  Meghan calls this the Jaws photo.

Shooting underwater required a bit of setup but once done, the pictures turned out pretty well (I think.. judge for yourself).  I had to set the white balance – and the ‘underwater’ setting on the G7 worked pretty well.  I also set the ISO for a slightly darker image (as the light falls off pretty quickly underwater and the built-in flash is useless with the underwater housing).  I then opened up the apeture as wide as it would go – meaning I had to give the camera time to focus before firing to avoid the blurs.  Zooming wasn’t possible with the housing so I just shot everything wide and cropped when I got back.  This also helped as framing the subjects was often a challenge.

After this experience I will definitely continue to bring the housing on future trips – and if I were to get serious about snorkeling (is there such a thing?) SCUBA, I would like to invest in a proper housing for the SLR.  But until then, I like the setup that I’ve got.

As an aside, I also used the housing for our trip to the ATM cave inland in Belize which was pretty cool as I was the only one who was able to take photos of the hike in because everyone else had their cameras packed away in the waterproof bag.

Finally, choosing only 1 photo each week can been a challenge – for various reasons.  This week’s challenge was choosing 1 image from the Belize trip.  This was my runner-up.  It was taken in preparation for the trip to Africa later in the year (shooting animals).  It was also taken with the Canon G7 – a camera I’ve since replaced with an updated G10 model because my G7 got damaged.  It’s on my list of posts (for knuetter.com) to write about my impressions with the G-series cameras from Canon.  The short: It’s a camera I recommend highly.