Macro with little critters from the rockpool

I stumbled upon these images I made at a rockpool near our Hundvag house sometime ago. It started off just with a camera attached with a  Sigma 150/2.8 Macro lens while taking a stroll along the shore. Even in the cold of February there were critters thriving in the rockpools along the shoreline, living their quiet little lives unfettered by crummy weather and pesky humans.

Until the day I first found them, I thought they wouldn't be around until it's a bit warmer. Having found thriving, I came back to the same spot a few days later with dual flash, two tripods (one for the flash, another for the camera), a small container as a temporary holding tank filled up with seawater from the rockpool. Then I "abducted" the little critters into the tank for a short macro photography session ala nature documentaries you see on tv.

These fellas were actually very tiny in real life, they were made to seem larger than life via the 150 lens and 1,6 crop factor shooting macro. After the short alien abduction session they were released back into their rockpool unharmed.

It is much easier to shoot active creatures like these under controlled lighting. Conditions in the rockpool is not condusive to picture making due to the low level of light. Having said that I have since acquired an underwater led light as well as a small waterproof Gopro like camera for making videos in situ. I'm hoping to be able to sufficiently lit the rockpool with the led and record the shennanigans that go on with these critters underwater.

The holding tank. Shooting without the tank poses some lighting issues since it's pretty dark in the rockpool, and also that the critters are free to just go AWOL under a rock.

A few passers by were curious and asked what I was doing, "Jei tar bilder pa rekke!" They happily moved along ... nothing to see here folks, move along, move along!