Dave Fortin’s Critter Page

In my diving I have taken a few critter photos and occasionally I get lucky and I get a few fairly decent shots. I have organized the following pages in groups of 6 photos in hope that it is a reasonable number to download/view at any given time. Comments are welcome.

All of the photos (so far) were taken by me in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The camera is a Nikonos V with a single SB-105 strobe. The lens used may be the standard 35mm lens, or with the close-up attachment or with one or more of the extension tubes. For critters the film used is generally 50 or 100 ASA Fuji slide film. Occasionally, 400ASA film might be used, but not often. The slides are scanned in using a Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II film scanner.

I will attempt to add pages as quickly as I can here at first. It will probably slow down over time, but for now I guess you would say that I am a bit backlogged on making the pages. Please pardon the simple format. For now I am simply using Microsoft Word to create the pages so that I can just start getting something out there. You may see refinements over time as I gain more experience at this!

Now in order to save disk space these pictures are not of the highest resolution. If you should be interested in perhaps printing a picture for your personal use, please e-mail me and describe which picture you are interested in. I took these pictures for people to enjoy, so if you really like one I would be glad to share them with you. If for non-personal use, please contact me as well. I’m sure we can work something out.

In the pages that follow, please keep in mind that I dive to enjoy the view. I love taking photos and looking for interesting subjects. However, I am not an expert on these sea critters. I have a couple books, a few videos and a couple mentors that help me understand what I am seeing, but I can only absorb so much! I generally refer to things by their common names since: 1) I probably can’t pronounce the Latin names and 2) I’ll never remember them! Usually after I have taken a shot or two of something I start to get curious as to what I am seeing and then I seek some assistance. I’m learning, but there is a lot to learn!

That brings us to Scott Johnson. Scott is one of the local experts on the marine environment here at Kwajalein. Scott has lived here quite a few years and his degrees and background are related to the critters in the sea. You can almost see Scott cringe when someone uses a common name for something; Latin is his life. So if you see any Latin names for things here in the pages that follow, odds are that I had some input from Scott. (I don’t think he can take seeing me use common names, but that’s just my guess!) I am rarely brave enough to try to claim I know what something is since I tend to find that we have some variant not quite what my book shows! So, “Thanks Scott” for all your input.

Please follow the links below for more photos:

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9

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