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Jett Britnell Photographics

Category Diving

DivingConservation

A Dive in the Clouds

Jett & Kathryn Britnell Posted onJuly 12, 2016July 23, 2021 Comments are off
Cloud Sponge - Jett Britnell
Cloud Sponge, British Columbia

Cloud sponges (Aphrocallistes vastus) are a prehistoric sponge typically found only in deep cold seas. Their unique and fragile skeletal formation makes cloud sponges extremely sensitive to the slightest touch, sedimentation, and to physical disturbances from bottom trawling fishing activity. They are sometimes called “glass” sponges because their structure is made up of very sharp fused spicules of silica. Cloud sponge are found in the northern Pacific Ocean and their range includes Japan, Siberia, the Aleutian Islands and the west coast of North America from Alaska southwards to California and Mexico. It is a reef-building species found in deeper waters on the western Canadian shelf growing on sediment-free rocks. They grow in fiords off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, beginning at depths of 25 metres (82 feet), or more.

Photography TipsDiving

Rare Photo Capture – Elegant Coastal Shrimp

Jett & Kathryn Britnell Posted onJune 1, 2016April 10, 2019 Comments are off
ELegant Coastal Shrimp
Elegant Coastal Shrimp

Rare Photo Capture

An elegant coastal shrimp. This was something we had never seen before on a sea pen. Intent on capturing a marine life photo that was something beyond the ordinary, I quickly focused my camera’s macro lens on the discover several elegant coastal shrimp’s (Heptacarpus decorus) shrimp’s bulbous eyes.

Negative Space

One key element in creating successful underwater photographs is to use negative space to artistic effect. Negative space is defined as being the area between and around objects in a photo that can help strengthen your composition and add extra emphasis to the main subject. Since elegant coastal shrimp have mostly translucent bodies, the orange sea pen’s colonies of polyp formations provided both a colorful backdrop and some superb negative space for my main subject.

Heptacarpus Decorus

Elegant coastal shrimp have a prominent hump on their back and are relatively small at 2.3 inches (6 cm) in length. Ranging from the Aleutian Islands, Alaska to California, they are but one of more than 85 shrimp species inhabiting British Columbia’s Emerald Sea. While most local shrimp species are easily recognized, you have to take a longer look to accurately identify the elegant coastal shrimp as they are sometimes mistakenly identified as being threespine costal shrimp.

Positively Elegant by Jett Britnell

Underwater Camera Settings

Photograph made in Queen Charlotte Strait’s famed Browning Passage, off the north coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, using a Nikon D200 digital camera in a Sealux underwater housing fitted with a Nikon 60mm macro lens and a single Sea & Sea YS-110a strobe. Exposure f/16 at 1/125th of a second at ISO 200.

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