Photographing the jellyfish in the Rhine Channel...

Photographing the jellyfish in the Rhine Channel was a challenging

assignment. Since we don’t have underwater housing for any of our

cameras, I had to get my hands on a vinyl bag with a watertight seal,

which Photo Editor Steve McCrank let me borrow.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get one that was big enough to house the

bigger cameras that we use, so I had to rely on a point-and-shoot

digital camera. Once the two items were together, I went to the

channel and began experimenting with different exposures and flash

outputs until I got the perfect combinationn.

Finally, with everything that I could control in place, I had to

wait for the jellyfish to start swimming around near the surface of

the water, and under the slips. Luckily, a boat came by that stirred

up the water and got the jellyfish swimming. They floated under the

slip, I shot a few frames “using The Force” to guide me -- I could

not see clearly where the jellyfish were under the slip -- and I came

back with the shot you see here.

-- Mark C. Dustin