We had some untraditional Vertigo events going down this morning with solid action.

Our first surprise was a Manta Ray buzzing a shark bait box dive – one minute we’re watching sharks school up around our group, and the next a Manta Ray is coming off the reef and diving into the blue around our show.

We didn’t see one at the cleaning station, but got the flyby through the shark school… it made for an interesting dive. We had a huge green turtle pass by, there’s been massive grouper partake on a feed dive and large napoleon wrasse… but today’s Manta Ray was a first shark dive visitor.

After 90 minutes on the reef with the sharks, the fun didn’t stop.

David and Marty setup their gear for taking half/half shots at the surface with the grey and black tips.

“Watch your fingers!”

These guys are bringing home killer shots and showing us how to fill our SD cards with interesting and different wildlife snaps.

David and Marty are getting a lot of Black tip media this trip and putting guests on the action on their boats.

Media Leak

Here’s Anke, our returning best of show winner from last year.

Education

Today we got the full upload from Marty Snyderman on proper exposure in his presentation called “the four exposure scenarios”. Marty explains how to setup your shot for proper exposure and light your subject in wide angle and macro photography in day and night scenarios.

We learned about natural lighting and strobe lighting with and without the sun. The cool thing about the educational series is that we get focused information presented, Q&A time with the presenter and the chance to get on the boat and in the water to try this out first thing in the morning with more Q&A during a surface interval.

Marty went over light metering settings for different scenes – we’re learning about camera functions and when to use them for proper exposure.

Photographers that went pro shooting film had to nail exposure.

The advent of digital photography lets us new school photogs bring home nice pictures through trial and error, but you can tell the difference between a shooter that setup the shot starting with exposure and one who didn’t. The pro’s are handing down their experience and cutting us in on the fundamentals checklist that makes their photos really pop.

Stay tuned, we have several more days of diving and then we’ll be passing out some live aboard trips, Mares gear and more.