Aaron Halstead Photography

01/18/2025

Floating chains and man-made pilings. A salp-y dive, with one of my favorites, a cabezon!

Nauticam D850 + 2x Retra Pro + WACP + Kraken 5k

01/11/2025

California scorpionfish (Scorpaena guttata).

In my opinion, one of the more difficult fish to shoot a pleasing image of, yet I continue to try again and again.They are not super skittish, but they are drab, masters of camouflage and getting any amount of separation from the habitat they so closely mirror is challenging.

Luckily, this one was sitting in the sand with a slight amount of space from the reef. This was enough to get some negative space using the Nauticam EMWL 160 optic.

D850 + EMWL + 2x MF2 + Kraken focus light.

01/04/2025

Still kickin' ... and clickin'.

Been a bit slow to work through my backlog (it's been a year). One thing I always tell people who don't dive or haven't dove the oil rigs is just how much life they support.

Every inch of the structure is habitat, and this means an abundance of marine life from invertebrates, to fish and mammals. I even saw a juvenile wolf eel this trip.

Nikon D850 + WACP + Retra Pro

09/14/2024

A Monastery moment.

Any time spent under a kelp canopy is time well spent. This egg yolk jelly was momentarily held in place, as an anemone caught hold of a dangling te****le, allowing me to circle around the side to catch it as it was lit up by small pockets of light coming through the kelp.

From the recent Monterey Shootout.

Kraken 5k for focus, Nauticam D850, Nikonos RS 13mm, and Retra flashes.

08/28/2024

A bit slow, but my slight re-edit on my image for the Monterey Shootout. After seeing this on the projector it felt like I had left a little on the table in my edit.. this hit a few chunks of backscatter and a very slight crop from what I actually submitted.

Not only are the dives super important, but so is your ability to find and choose subjects, knowing when to move on if things aren't working or likely to work out.

And then the editing and culling. Saving enough time, and processing power (mental and physical compute) to make it through your work to pick the optimal set of images.

That, is the shootout. And of course, what ties it all together is the people. Truly. It goes without saying that the diving is (usually) spectacular, but the cumulation of all of these is pretty darn special and why I return year after year.

Special shout out to
and for the dives!

07/11/2024

A big shout out to Crystal Blue Resort, to Mike and all the guests who made for another great trip to Anilao.

DPG contributor, Aaron Halstead has put together a beautiful macro portfolio featuring images from Anilao, including this fantastic rimlit painted frogfish.

https://bit.ly/3VQBrYk

06/30/2024

Pretty flat, pretty green and SUPER salpy. I don't think I have ever seen this many salps off Laguna.

06/08/2024

A very slow follow through, but wanted to give shoutout to Eight for the fills, weights, tanks and friendly (and helpful!) chats about your local diving!

A fun, and productive trips that I certainly hope to repeat this coming winter. For any of my cold travel-diving friends, highly recommend the shop, and the diving! Lumpsuckers are the best.

05/10/2024

Gotta love the weirdos... The iconic sailfin sculpin.

The most prominent (and obvious) feature is the elongated dorsal fin, with fins running the remaining length of the fish.

These fins are pulsed front to back like a wave, or fabric blowing in the wind, making for some of the coolest "swims" in the sea!

Of course, a video would show this so much better than I can explain so I'll just leave this as a "trust me bro" story. Hopefully my next encounter I remember to flip to video.

05/08/2024

Lovely day for a stroll, innit.

so kindly flagged me down to point out this lovely large red (ruby?) octopus at Seacrest, and I happily followed it the remainder of the dive.

From old timber of some sorts, across a bunch of sand, a quick interaction with another octo in a pipe, more sand, a little kelp and eventually eelgrass in the shallows!

Like all octopus encounters, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this beautiful animal.

05/05/2024

This cute little (lump)sucker has been sitting on my hard drive for far too long.

The Pacific Spiney Lumpsucker was the target for my dive trip up north to the Seattle area. These little guys have been on my list for years and years, so I was super happy to finally get a taste of PNW diving to go look for them last December.

Luckily, with some great tips and guidance from , .eric_ and several other friendly local divers, I was able to experience them in all their glory.

I'll be honest, 4 or 5 dives, even at 80-90 minutes each was still not nearly enough. Hope to make this a yearly trip moving forward.

12/03/2023

Raise your h̶a̶n̶d̶ fin if you are long overdue for a dive trip.

Playing with new lenses and ports can help to open new perspectives. Of course, good cooperative subjects (and conditions) are always welcome.

Side note - super excited to be heading to Seattle shortly!