Art Roundup, week of March 5th

Last week I brought the first couple of images from the shark dive, from my 2005 Blackbeard’s Cruise, and this week I’m presenting all but one of the remaining images from this series. Even though it’s been almost seventeen years since I took that trip, I vividly remember ever second of the dive, with or without my photos. I would definitely like to revisit every dive site again in the future. If you see any images here that aren’t available on Natural Desygns or SM Desygns reach out to me through the Etsy store and I’ll add the image to the correct store. In the meantime, click any of the images to head over to DeviantArt to get a better look.


Feasting

As the feeding frenzy built, I turned my camera to the line running up from the central hunk of coral. And captured an image filled to the brim of sharks seeking their share of the feed. Whenever I close my eyes and think about this trip, this is the image that comes to mind. As a result, I wanted to make this watercolor rendition pop. So, when I finished the transformation, I turned my attention to the creating a frame to make it pop.

As the frenzy calmed down, a few of the sharks kept circling the line. Despite the number of predators decreasing, they continued to provide me with amazing pictures of the watery depths.

Seconds?

Watched Withdraw

Despite having a collection of amazing pictures from this dive, I’m never able to keep every shot firmly entrenched in my mind, resulting in some of the more interesting pictures being forgotten about. So when I sat down to thumb through them this time, I stumbled upon one that’s more remarkable than I remembered. After the sharks finished eating, they dispersed, and as one of the solitary predators swam past us, I whirled and pulled the camera up to capture the fleeing shark. While I focused on the animal, I missed the fact that I included a sliver of another diver as he watched the shark speed into the depths.

Before the divemaster released us to search the ground for shark teeth, one of the last predators took one more pass over the central hunk of coral. Once it realized that the food was gone, I left my patch of the U-shaped outcropping and ran my finger through the silt, discovering two teeth. When I cracked open my dive log, I smiled at the solitary tooth held within.

Final Pass