Macro Photography in Utila Part I

Utila, one of the Bay Islands in Honduras, offers fantastic diving, welcoming people, diverse culture and amazing natural beauty. It’s also a great place to hone, or even begin to develop, your macro photography skills. Best of all, you needn’t be a skilled photographer to start practicing macro photography in this island paradise. 

Brad Ryon, Utila transplant and owner of Re/Max Realty on the island, was not always a macro photographer.  Even now, it’s still only a hobby, when he’s not showing properties or hosting camera crews filming for HGTV.  However, he has been able to perfect his macro talent on Utila, and has even become one of those featured photographers and contest winners that we all marvel at.

Ryon began diving as a youngster, certifying at 18, and pursued his passion for the marine world by working in Hawaii as a marine-mammal biologist and doing coral studies on Glover Reef in the mid-90s.  He used telephoto lenses and dabbled in some macro, though mostly above water. So why Utila?

Why try macro photography in Utila?

As the story goes with many who end up here, Ryon planned to spend three days on Utila during a Central American vacation. He left two weeks later after buying property. Once established on the island, Ryon turned his attention to what drew him here in the first place: the marine world and photography. 

The Mesoamerican Reef offers fantastic diversity in general, but Utila offers significant diversity in a very small area.  There is diving right off shore anywhere around the island.  Simply wade into the water and you’re on world-class dive sites and healthy reefs.  For example, Little Little Bight (not to be confused with Little Bight nearby) and Jack Neil Point, on the south shore, are good for photography because of the mixed environment of patch reef, sand, gravel, and wall that support lots of different creatures.  You will find hard and soft corals, small blennies, gobies, wrasses, tarpon, barracuda, jack, cobia, eagle and stingrays, sharks and octopus, just to name a few. 

The waters are calm most of the time and the diving is easy around Utila, so you don’t have to go deep.  In fact, when Ryon first arrived, he had to snorkel because he had no tanks or a compressor, so he was always in 15 feet of water or less.

How amazing can Utila’s macro life be? Ryon has, on three separate occasions, found an octopus nest with females guarding eggs.  The best photos came from 50 dives over six weeks where he photographed the growth of the embryos in their eggs until they hatched. Obviously, an extended vacation may be in order to capture something that cool, but Utila affords a novice photographer the opportunity to significantly improve and to photograph a huge variety of subjects.

In our next article, we’ll dive a bit more deeply into the technical aspects of macro photography on Utila, as well as offer some tips and tricks from Ryon on how to get started. Stay tuned!

The post Macro Photography in Utila Part I appeared first on Scuba Diver Life.

from Scuba Diver Life http://ift.tt/2j5uvVh