(c) September 2006 Oliver Bonten
Fish, Shark, Longimanus Shark
Another favourite of mine. The second most dangerous predator of the Red Sea (the most dangerous being the species on the other side of the camera). The Longimanus shark, or white-tip sea shark, is a rather impressive and elegant creature. Don't confuse it with the harmless white-tip reef shark ... the Longimanus is much bigger and fiercer. Rumour says that in Elphinstone Reef, while divers are diving, the boat crew will dump edible garbage and probably a bit more into the sea, to attract the sharks. When divers return to the boat, Longimanus sharks are circling about 5m below the boats, ready to be watched or photographed. Feeding them is highly illegal, of course, but it would be difficult to explain the presence of sharks just under the boats otherwise. But the Longimanus is not too small to attack humans ... if the feeding ends, it may become quite dangerous to return to a boat with hungry sharks circling below. A problem with animals of this size is that the lighting is either right for the fish or the background. There is quite a lot of water between the shark and the lens, so the strobe doesn't carry that far. This means that at first the shark has a blue tint. You can adjust this by setting the white balance (the shark conveniently has a white tip), but then the Deep Blue in the background becomes something not very deep blue. The solution is to overlay the white-balanced shark over a not white-balanced background - The Teacher did this in photoshop.
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