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Scuba Diver Korea is one beautiful diving magazine! The print quality is excellent and each thick issue is as heavy as a brick. I was recently introduced to Scuba Diver Korea by Kevin Lee. Kevin, a top marine photographer who has photographed underwater on all seven continents, kindly introduced me to the publishers of Scuba Diver Korea. I was hesitant at first to submit my work since I have not had an underwater pictorial published in some years, and cannot shake the feeling that my older film work does not hold up well next to the modern sharp digital imagery. Well, Scuba Diver elected to run a selection of images, and the result is a very nice pictorial in the latest issue. The copies arrived and they look great. This is really a high quality magazine, of the sort we do not see too often anymore in the print industry. (If you are curious, here is a link to the online version of the pictorial). I no longer have a list of the countries in which I have been published but I am virtually certain it did not include Korea before today!. A hearty “Thank you” to Scuba Diver Korea and Kevin Lee. Cheers and thanks for looking!

“Times of Time” was a coffee table-type book, a collaborative product of the Jaeger-LeCoutre Watch Company, the United Nations, the World Heritage Centre and the International Herald Tribune, focusing on ocean issues. My photo of a newborn gray whale calf, photographed 17 years ago offshore of Point Lobos / Big Sur with photographer pals Ken Howard, Skip Stubbs and Kevin McDonnell, was selected for the cover. Note the embryonic folds seen along the whales body, a result of it being curled up in the womb, and a bit of the umbilicus — this calf was very very young, perhaps just hours old. Cheers, and thanks for looking!

Plus One Collection Limited Edition Book

The exciting new collaborative photography project Plus One Collection has just released its first Limited Edition portfolio. The best part is: the net profits from the Limited Edition Book go entirely to Kiva.org, which provides micro loans to entrepreneurs in all countries and cultures around the world. Kiva.org is really worth supportin. If you are not familiar with it, Kiva.org provides a new way for entrepreneurs to access the small amounts of financing they need to get their ideas to market, particularly in developing countries or turbulent areas of the globe! I contributed a single image to the collection (as did all of the participating photographers) and was fortunate to have my image chosen for the Limited Edition print book as well as the home page of the Plus One Collection website. Please take a look and, hopefully, consider purchasing a copy of the book. Remember, the Limited Edition print book is only available for purchase until February 20!

The Plus One Collection is built on the creative works of Google+ photography community and was spearheaded by photographer Ivan Makarov. I am proud to have contributed to the project, as well as purchased a copy of the Limited Edition print book. If you are a photographer, please consider connecting with me on Google+.

I received an invitation from Alister Benn recently to take a look at, and contribute to, Whytake.net. This new website and social networking tool founded by Benn and Rafael Rojas is designed to bring nature photographers together and help them share their work with the world. The design of Whytake.net is simple, clean and very appealing to me, and the quality of work appearing on Whytake.net from contributing photographers is impressive. Take a look today! Click the image below to see my portfolio on Whytake.net but be certain to check out the INSPIRE and EXPLORE links at the top of the page to see the work of other great photographers.

The 2010 occasion of the International Conservation Photography Awards was held recently in Seattle, with winners being announced June 19 and an exhibit of many of images running until September 6 at The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington. You can view online photos of the evening reception (which to my regret I was unable to attend) as well as winning and honorably-mentioned images from the 2010 ICP Awards competition. Be sure to check out Stuart Westmorland’s stunning sailfish photograph among the small group of distinguished awards! I was fortunate enough to have one of the earliest “keepers” I ever shot underwater be given an honorable mention in the competition, a study of kelp fronds photographed about 20 years ago in the kelp forest at San Clemente Island:

Kelp frond showing pneumatocysts.
Image ID: 00627
Species: Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera
Location: San Clemente Island, California, USA

About the International Conservation Photography Awards: Known for his passionate advocacy of the environment, nature photographer Art Wolfe created a conservation-themed photo contest in 1997 as “an event for the advancement of photography as a unique medium capable of bringing awareness and preservation to our environment through art.” The 2010 International Conservation Photography Awards is a continuation of Art Wolfe’s vision and has become a biennial (every two years) international event. Each year the ICP Awards strives to increase its reach and influence to photographers from around the world as well as to diverse audiences who will be inspired by the work. More than just a competition, 75+ of the juried photographs will be exhibited in 2010 via a new partnership with The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, a development that continues to raise the bar for this program. ICP Awards organizers are also exploring ways to travel the exhibit in the interim year before the next program in 2012 – please let us know if you have ideas about venues that would be interested in hosting the exhibit during the 2011 year. The ICP Awards are open to all photographers worldwide.

This year’s edition of the Tidelines calendar is especially nice because one of our photos appears on the cover (duh). Can you guess where it was shot? Hint: it rhymes with “ledge” and lots of bones are broken there. Order your Tidelines calendar now so you too can time all your ocean functions to take maximum advantage of the tide. By the way, a big swell arrives tomorrow, if you have a Tidelines calendar on your wall you’ll know when to go.

We checked out the web logs for the first time in a while. OceanLight.com is receiving about 200,000 visitors and 300,000 visits a month, not counting crawlers (e.g., Google, Yahoo, MSN), that’s over two million visitors each year. It is increasing each month (probably in sync with the increase in people with access to the internet, doh). The incoming phone calls and email inquiries from editors and publishers are increasing with the web traffic which means the site is serving its purpose. (We do no marketing whatsoever, other than maintaining this website.) Thanks Google, keep ’em coming.

Still another academic journal cover — too bad these guys don’t pay the big bucks.

My photograph of a scalloped hammerhead shark appeared on the June 2005 cover of the Journal of Morphology, to accompany Olfactory Morphology of Carcharhinid and Sphyrnid Sharks: Does the Cephalofoil Confer a Sensory Advantage? (Kajiura, Forni and Summers):

Scalloped hammerhead shark.
Image ID: 03243
Species: Scalloped hammerhead shark, Sphyrna lewini
Location: Cocos Island, Costa Rica

Here’s another “scientific journal” cover, I’ve had a few of these in the last three years. My photograph of schooling jacks in the Sea of Cortez appeared on the cover of the January 2006 issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences to accompany The principles of collective animal behavior (Sumpter):

Schooling fish, circling jacks, Las Animas, Sea of Cortez, Baja California.
Image ID: 00249
Species: Bigeye jack, Caranx sexfasciatus