Thanks for checking out this site. A bit about me, for those of you who don't know me. I'm an entomologist by trade for the State of Hawaiʻi. At least in theory. Most of my work now is managing projects, mainly the big projects that the Department is engaged in. The biggest right now is the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle project. I have my own consulting business (of which I haven't been doing much of that lately either). When I'm not working, I'm the Treasurer/Office Manager/Webmaster for the Hawaiian Entomological Society. For fun there's photography, which may be why you're here, spearfishing, and writing.
Most of the land based photos were shot with a Canon 7D and now with a Canon EOS M3 although I long for a full frame camera so if anyone wants to get me a Canon EOS 1DX please do (and get it from my friends at Kaimuki Camera. Support local businesses!). If that’s asking for too much, I will settle for a Canon 5D MK IV. Older shots were taken with a Minolta Maxxum 7D and a few go back to film that was processed and put onto disc by Kaimuki Camera (and a few even older ones that were scanned). My underwater shots have been taken with a variety of cameras, all of them Canons, beginning with a Canon Elph Sport. I loved that camera even though it used APS film. I did learn one thing: that camera could go deeper than it was rated for without leaking. It did take shots on its own after you passed the fifty foot depth though. My latest underwater rig is a Canon S90 with a housing.
My interest in photography started with work. I needed to take close up photos of the eyes of pest fruitflies (not the kind you studied in Biology). I used a film camera with a bellows set up and a reverse mounted macro lens. It was sweet rig although it doesn't hold a candle to my current macro set up. The magnification of that setup was incredible but the focal depth was lacking! I wish I had an image stacking function— of course keeping the flies immobile and alive that long would have been impossible. After that, I started taking pictures of flies fluorescing under special UV light which required a lot of fiddling— and I spent tons of money on film— thank goodness it was covered by grant money! It then expanded to underwater photos and flowers and it's gone on from there. Now I've expanded to people. All I can say is this is an expensive hobby but I want to share my photos with more people. Unlike version 1 of this website, many of the photos have some comments.
As for my blog, it is a combination of a photo blog, recipe book and random musings (what I used to call, when I was younger, WATS, Weird Ass Theories). I’m slowly adding content from the original site. It’s still good stuff so if you have not read it, you should go and check it out!
The site itself was designed using Sandvox. It's a great little program that is both easy to use and powerful. It is, however, Mac only.
I hope you enjoy both the photos and the words.
Aloha,
Darcy
