Okay, that’s enough: no more Dennis the Dugong after this post (at least for now). The Portugese underwater filmer Joel Machado, who can be seen at work this photo, just sent me a link to his video of our little quest to find Dennis.
Abu Dabab – “the dining room” from Joel Machado on Vimeo.
You can see me swim by a few times and trying to get aquinted with a Remorra… at 04:21 I’m actually taking this picture (watch the flash). But have a look at the video because it’s simply beautiful!
This one came in a bit late. My article on Caribbean Island Hopping for the Belgium Feeling Magazine (a glossy which is also available in the Netherlands) was published last year October. The travel-report focussus on travelling between Caribbean Islands like Saba, St.Maarten/St.Martin, St.Eustatius, Tortola, Antigua and Dominica.
© 2007 Fotograferen.net & Feeling Magazine.
Text & photography by Fotograferen.net
Download full pdf here.
For the largest Dutch travel monthly: ANWB REIZEN Magazine, May 2008 issue, I did a full report on the Black Sea coast at the end of the summer of 2007. Focus of the article was the “Betonpolitie” or “Concrete Police”: a series of articles that asks the question if there is too much building going on at certain destinations that were renowned for their untouched beauty. In this case the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. As it turns out, a lot of the coastal line has been heavily overdeveloped but I still managed to find a few relatively untouched places along the way. Not an easy article to make as I was travelling alone and I manage to do about 1600 kilometres in one week to find all the good bits.
Text and photography: © Fotograferen.net & ANWB Reizen Magazine.
Text & photography by Fotograferen.net
Download PFD of the article here.
One of my favorite places in the USA has got to be the State of Oregon: from hundreds of miles of unspoiled beaches with their impressive dunes to snowcapped Mountains and old volcanoes: hardly any state in the US has so much to offer in terms of the great outdoors. Rivers, deserts, endless forests and large numbers of picture perfect lakes await the interested visitor. But the true gem is found underground, near the little town of Bend nature left behind lava-tunnels from volcanic eruptions that happened tens to hundred thousands years ago.
Lava, as most people quickly realize is somewhat on the hot side of the temperature scale. One can bake an egg on the hood of the car in a hot desert but one can bake both (egg and car) on a fresh stream of lava!
Something else is interesting about those (mostly undergournd) lava-streams: the outside cools quicker than the inside (something similar happens with you bowl of soup, although I wouldn’t recommend eating hot lava though). So while the outside quickly cools down to rock again, the inside slowly releases its temperature and when it does: it shrinks. After a while you have a partly filled in tube of lava, the bottom of which is flat and makes for a nice walk if you happen to find a tunnel like that. This website expains it quite nicely by the way.
In the state of Oregon, a few of those tunnels have been so well preserved one can still walk through them. That is, with a professional guide and a helmet of course!
So, how to capture these on film or memory card? It’s pitch-black inside and the helmet lamps are just sufficient to see where you put your feet (after all these years the floor is not as flat as it used to be). A tripod and the combined helmet lights were more than plentiful for some good pictures. Thirty second exposures and having my “models” stand still for that period of time did the job and they got some time to soak in the surroundings. Everybody happy!
So, when in the neighborhood make sure to get in contact with the guys from Wanderlust Tours as they are the only licensed guides for these tunnel complexes.
Oh, and do bring some Mint Lifesavers. You’ll see them spark in the absolute darkness when you bite them hard!
With many thanks:
Wanderlust Tours
Travel Oregon
Seventh Mountain Resort
Lufthansa
And this is what the sky looked like when we got out again, also available as an hi-res wallpaper.
It is starting out to be a bit of a Port Ghalib fest on this website as (see here and here), again, there is another publication on this brand new resorttown. This time a massive 8-page checkout in the Dutch diving magazine Duikmagazine. The article is about the resort as well as the fantastic diving with the guys from Emperor Divers who run a very nice operation over there. Surely one of the best spots in Egypt that easily accesible as Port Ghalib is about ten minutes away from the Marsa Alam airport. Resort quality? Let’s just say that it’s the only place in Egypt where I’ve found it to be safe to eat the salads and fruits in the hotels.
Again, a full PDF is downloadable here.
Many thanks go out to:
www.discoverportghalib.com
www.suninternational.com
www.emperordivers.com
www.isropa.nl
www.tourismafrica.nl
Get the dualscreen wallpaper here.
Get the dualscreen wallpaper here.
Nothing better than starting out the brand new year in London. While enjoying a few days of relaxation early January in this great city across the Channel I had some time to capture a few panorama’s of the impressive skyline. But, with a clear blue sky like this things really can’t go wrong anyway. The First two were taken from the top of the St.Paul’s Cathedral dome which is a very nice steep walk up to the top. Plenty of stairs to exercise the leg muscles and some incredible views halfway inside the church as well (which, sadly, you’re not allowed to photograph). Definitely worth the steep entry fee of £10 as, beside the impressive cathedral, the view over the City is worth the climb.
Get the dualscreen wallpaper here.
The last panorama was taken outside the city at the wide open fields of Greenwich Village Park. This place must be amazing during summer weekends but this nice Sunday afternoon was certainly no disappointment either. Greenwich is the oldest enclosed Royal Park and home to a small herd of fallow and red deer. Situated on top of a hill, visitors enjoy sweeping views across the River Thames to St Paul’s Cathedral and beyond. The park is part of the Greenwich World Heritage Site, host to the Prime Meridian Line and the old Royal Observatory, as well as having the National Maritime Museum as a neighbour.
For a change, these images were not captured with my Canon EOS 1DmkIII but with brand-new Canon G9, a camera which has plenty of features and some great controls but whose imagery is a bit disappointing considering this is Canon’s top model compact camera. Too much noise for my liking at the higher ISO range and horrible flash controls. Happily I didn’t have that problem here as these were captured at 80-100 ISO, no flash please!
Knowing there is something to fotograph but not being able to find it sort of frustrating, especially when underwater and being limited by an annoying but finite thing as an air supply.
Try imagining an area as large as a couple of football fields of underwater seagrass and an underwater visibility of about 20 meters and you’ll understand it’s not easy to find a specific living animal, even it has the size of about two humans.
The “thing” I am talking about is “Dennis”, the famous seacow (or Dugong, it’s one of the three members of the Manatee family) of the Abu Dabbab bay near Port Ghalib in the Marsa Alam region of Egypt.
Seeing these pictures you’ve probably guessed we found it but it took us two full-hour dives to actually spot it. Sure, we did come across plenty of huge and approacheable Turtles and a couple of large Stingrays but imagine being a the last stage of your dive (it’s that limited air supply) and spotting an enormous dustcloud underwater, the number one Dugong signature… but no Dennis to match it.
Turned out it was right above us and while we were getting highly frustrated not seeing it, he was just getting a breath of fresh air. Our paths finally crossed when we decided to go up and finish the dive while he was going down to continue vacuuming the seafloor.
We squeezed a few last minutes at our ample air supply… enjoy the shots!
Images taken with a Canon Eos 20D, 15mm f2.8 fisheye and an UK-Germany housing.
Lately, I’ve been getting quite a few request for hi-res images from the Dhow sailing boats that I captured along the Tanzanian coast in 2004. So, I figured it was time to make a decent posting about these incredible sailing ships that transport cargo and people over the rough seas of the Indian Ocean. At the end of this post there is a slideshow with decent captions about the Dhows, Zanzibar, Dolhpin watching and Stonetown. Enjoy!
Check out all 1800 images of the Dutch Chapionships Snowboarding in Laax, 21-25 January 2008.
- click on image to see all photo’s -
Feel free to download the photo’s for PRIVATE USE ONLY!!!
Just a nice shot from the half-pipe contest. Won by Dolf van der Wal, he deserves a nice wallpaper… 
(click here for XL wallpaper)
(click here for widescreen wallpaper)
