Ok, I'm trying to get some more time in on the board.....been a ghost for some time.

Why? well...work, etc....but lately I've been getting my Scuba certs. I picked up an underwater housing for my digital camera and gave it a trial run on Wed during a fun dive.

Now, since I'm way up here in North Dakota....I don't have any really awesome pics relatives of the fish we keep in our reef tanks. You'll just have to get by with the freshwater fish found in the Lakes of Minnesota. :-)

I started to put all the pics on my server in my living room, and there are some videos there too. So if you'd like to see a northern swimming around, or a small fish playing Jaws and following some of the divers....you will need the quicktime player. The video's will play in the browser, but you do need the player to watch them.

Here's the disclaimer....I wasn't very good with my picture taking skills underwater. A number of pics, especially of the fish are blurry. I will get better at this in time, next scheduled dive is in two weeks. But, I do have some prints from a regular film camera that turned out pretty good. As soon as I get them scanned in...I'll add them to my site...and maybe post a few here too. :)

Here's the link if you wish to check my pics out. Note, I'm playing around with a few photo gallery packages....with this one, go under "user galleries" and pick Scott. I'll be putting more albums in there for each dive I make.

http://scottsplace.homeip.net/coppermine/index.php

And for fun...here's a pic of me.

http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/scubascott.jpg

Cool photograph Scott. How did you fit in the 26 gallon? :rotfl:

Cool photograph Scott. How did you fit in the 26 gallon? :rotfl:
yeah...
and that waters looking pretty dirty..maybe you need a water change.. ;)

LOL! Well, I had to pull everything from the tank.... :)

Yeah, I wish it was as clear as my tank. but it was actually good viz...we had around 20 feet of visibility. Which is really good in some of these MN lakes! Back on the 31st we dove Lake Seven (right across the road for Lake Six) and we only had 6-8 feet of visibility.

I just can't wait to actually make it to a reef and take some pictures of our friends in their natural habitat.

great pic.....and you guys r 2 much....LOL!

Scott...looks like you have HA problems in that water...It's pretty Green!!!..LOL

How's the water temp? Can't wait to see the other pics..looks fun.

:kewlpics:

..

Ok, obviously these are some of the pics that you'd find via that link. But, I thought I'd post a "before" and "after" shot of a few. The "before" pics have only been re-sized to a lower resolution. Then the "after" pics got a little photoshop work....auto level, auto contrast, and auto color. Just a little difference between the two. <G>

http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/IMG_3095a.jpg http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/IMG_3095b.jpg

http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/IMG_3123a.jpg http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/IMG_3123b.jpg

John...here's a better pic of that "HA" you mentioned. LOL

http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/IMG_3125a.jpg http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/IMG_3125b.jpg

How's the water temp? Can't wait to see the other pics..looks fun.

Let's see....I had 70F for the water temp at the surface. And the temp was 64F down at 20 feet, just below a thermocline. That was for those photo's on June 14th, with the dive being from 7:15pm-8pm (central time).

I should have more pics available after I scan in 12 photo's from our Advanced Open Water photo dive. Both of my desktops have been down for over a year...and my scanner is a scsi scanner (don't have anything to hook it up to my laptop). So I'll try and scan in the photo's at work...maybe tomorrow. Otherwise, I should get some more pics and videos on the 29th...I think that's our next fun dive.

Back on May 13-14 is when I did my Open Water dives, and the water temp was 50F...of course the air temp was like 47F :rolleyes: . We did hit 41F when we did our deep dive for the Advanced class over Memorial Day weekend....that was at 79 feet down....water surface temp was at 73F with air temp at 82F. Wish I would have had a camera on that dive...as we were ascending (about 10 feet deep) we saw a loon swimming around. That was very cool to see, guess not many people have been underwater and seen a loon swimming around like that.

Overall, the water temp was ok for all of them. I'm diving wet...but I have my wetsuit, hooded vest, and core warmer along with the boots and gloves. Just fine in that setup. I plan on diving that this winter in the ice. :agree: Then maybe next year's tax return will get me a dry suit. :p

Great pics Scott, I wish I had the time and $$$ to dive!

Great pics Scott, I wish I had the time and $$$ to dive!

Thanks...didn't really have the cash until I found out I could get a little money from my GI Bill for a few classes I was taking back in spring. The classes were already taken care of so I debated what to use the money for...decided I wouldn't pay any bills with it, put off the idea of a Mac (was hard doing that) and decided I wanted to try something I've wanted to do since I was a kid...scuba dive. :) And now I'm hooked!

I should have more pics available after I scan in 12 photo's from our Advanced Open Water photo dive.

Anymore pics yet? :mrgreen:

Thanks for all your help the other night. Poor Scott was on the phone with me about 2 hours :o trying to explain how to work my new iPod and of course, the program I just LOVE, iTunes. ahhhhh!!

Anymore pics yet? :mrgreen:

DOH! Totally forgot about scanning the film pics....maybe that's something I should do today before I leave work.....as I can't use my home scanner.

Other than scanning those in.....I should get more pics tomorrow. Another fun dive....then I may get some neat ones over the weekend (1st-4th)....going to spend the entire weekend diving. :D

Thanks for all your help the other night. Poor Scott was on the phone with me about 2 hours :o trying to explain how to work my new iPod and of course, the program I just LOVE, iTunes. ahhhhh!!

Happy to help. :agree: So...were you able to jam out at work??? :cool:

Anymore pics yet? :mrgreen:

OK, here is a few samples. :) These pics were taken back on May 28th during a training dive, was an underwater film camera the dive shop had.

I've downsized them and ran auto level, color, and contrast on the photo's. I'll try and get all of them up in the photo section of my site.

Here's a log or post that had a bolt in it, used to be a open pit mine.
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/5-28-06/log-bolt.jpg

You find a lot of trees, as they had plenty of time to grow when the mine pits were still in use. But once they finished using the mines, they stopped pumping water out and the mines filled up with water and the trees became a great home for fish. Some of the mines are over 500 feet deep.
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/5-28-06/underwater_trees.jpg

Found this one almost right under the pontoon boat we were diving off. Water was shallow, around 15 feet in this area.
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/5-28-06/fish.jpg
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/5-28-06/fish1.jpg

Another shot of that fish.
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/5-28-06/fish2.jpg

The next three pics are the ones the guy I was buddied up with took.
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/5-28-06/fish3.jpg

Another fish, I liked this pic.
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/5-28-06/fish-trees.jpg

And here's another pic of me...with a friendly fish in front of me.
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/5-28-06/me-again.jpg

Hope those give you a little fix for now Gwen. :D

cool pictures. is fishing legal there?

Happy to help. :agree: So...were you able to jam out at work??? :cool:

Well I can't exactly jam out at work :) I wish I could. I did play Duane's Radio Show the other day and enjoyed that, but had to keep it turned really low.

Great fish pics Scott! Sounds like you have a fun weekend ahead of you!!

I love my iPod at work. I used to have my own real office and in Sept they moved us into cubes. I hate them. I play my iPod all day long just to block out all of the noise.

cool pictures. is fishing legal there?

thanks. People do fish in there....but while diving, I don't know. I'm not sure what MN has for "fishing" laws. I do know that spear fishing while diving is legal in one of the ND lakes.

i dont know, im kinda swinging towards that fish being better looking....:p

i dont know, im kinda swinging towards that fish being better looking....:p
yeah, but Scott does have that plastic diver tank ornament look and pose. :cool:

i dont know, im kinda swinging towards that fish being better looking....:p

LOL...yeah, I don't know if I want my pic taken again.....

yeah, but Scott does have that plastic diver tank ornament look and pose. :cool:

:rotfl: and I blow bubbles too!

that fish looks like an old grandma fish thats annoyed your lagging behind!


nice pics by the way. im enviro jealous

:rotfl: and I blow bubbles too!
:eek: how toxic ?

:eek: how toxic ?

only bubbles I blow underwater are NON toxic. :-)

that fish looks like an old grandma fish thats annoyed your lagging behind!


nice pics by the way. im enviro jealous

yeah, some fish look like that.....and then when you are swimming away, and turn to look behind you....there's a bunch right there following you.

glad you liked the pics....here come some more from the weekend of diving I did over the July 4th weekend.....

I adjusted a bunch of these in photoshop to try and get rid of the green tint you get underwater. used "auto levels", sometimes "auto color" and "auto contrast" too. And some of the pics didn't need any adjusting.

So, here's another pic of a tree....I think it had some fishing line drapped over a few branches that collected all of the silt...
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/Adjusted-Tree.jpg

Since these were old open pit mines for iron ore, that when they closed them up they let them fill up with water...you find interesting things in them. Mostly the fun stuff were placed there on purpose for divers....like the boat.
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/boat-diver.jpg

But then, you do come across a few items that were not initially intended for the divers....don't know if this was originally stolen or not...
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/car.jpg

Both the boat and car were in around 15-20 feet of water. The next item was a little deeper at 110 feet. It was plastic, if anyone was wondering, and it was next to an old mining pipe probably used to pump water out of the pit while it was in use.
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/skel.jpg

Since this is freshwater, the pics are not "reef" related....but I'll try and make up for that....well, a little....

So, on our last dive of the day (the 4th) we hit this awesome spot. A diver had placed a "homestead" in one of the pits around 11-15' deep. picket fence, lawn chairs, apartment mailbox, and pole with birdhouse on it. The best part of this site was the 6-10 bass hanging out...
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/Adjusted-School.jpg

http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/adjusted_bass1.jpg

http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/adjusted_bass2.jpg

http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/adjusted_bass3.jpg

here's a few pics of some next to the lawn chairs...
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/bass-chairs1.jpg

http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/bass-chairs2.jpg

And the last of the pics I'll post here on the board (I have a bunch more, plus video).

http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/fishy.jpg

nice northern we came across.
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/northern.jpg

And here's the last pic....freshwater clams (the two that look like rocks) :-)
http://scottsplace.homeip.net/scuba/4th_weekend_2006/clams.jpg

not even close to being pretty like the reef clams.

Very nice pics!! I like the homestead!

Very nice pics!! I like the homestead!

glad you liked the freshwater :rolleyes: pics. the homestead was great....we spent just over 20 minutes there playing with those fish, was at the end of the dive (total dive time was 42 min)...and we were running low on air. Otherwise I'm sure we would have spent more than 20min there!

For next time, I wanna see a pic of u sitting in the chair laying back with the clicker in ur hand ;)