This week Alex Mustard and Shannon Conway were in town catching up with my dive buddy Jayne, and on Thursday I was delighted to be able to go Weedy hunting with everyone to Kurnell.

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I have to say that it is great to be able to meet visiting Underwater Photographers and it is great to be able to show them part of what we have here in Sydney.

Aside from the obvious benefits of knowledge share and friendship, a visit is usually the motivation needed to dive somewhere you haven’t been for a while, and with the boys wanting to shoot Weedy Sea Dragons…well..we had to go to Kurnell.

Alas nowadays you really need to dive anywhere in Botany Bay on an incoming tide. This is thanks to the dredging for the port expansion at Port Botany which is due to continue for another 12 months at least.

Our first dive was on an in-coming, the second after high tide and I think Alex was happy he got his wide angle shots out of the way on the first dive and went macro second dive where the already poor viz got much worse with lots of fine sand suspended.

For me I went with the 100mm first dive and the 150mm second dive. I continue to work on the perfect “down the snout” shot, not there yet but getting closer.

I played with some shallow depth of field as well but with the viz so poor I needed to get really close and I actually had problems with over exposure (1/200th, F4.5, DS-125 on 1/8th power). I’ll leave the shallow dof play for another day.

I hope the boys, both of whom are OW-USS supporters, have a good trip to Vic and Tassie, I’m looking forward to seeing some of their shots.

Now, I’m off for a soak in the bath, my shoulders ache, I forgot how much walking (kitted up) you do at Kurnell….

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